Play/pause media button (F8) on MacBook Pro doesn't work

I found a potential solution to this issue. I signed out of the Apple Music application and re-signed in and now all media keys work across the top of the Magic Keyboard!

1. Open Music app
2. Go to Account
3. Click Sign Out (Media keys should work now)
4. Under the Account dropdown, click Sign In.
5. Type User Name, click Sign In
6. Type your Password for iTunes Store/Apple Music account and click Sign In

This resolved my issue. Hope it helps you too!

The answer from @nbarshian helped me to solve it.

You can remove media control from WhatsApp by going into:

1. Choose Apple menu: 
2. System Settings
3. Privacy & Security
4. Accessibility
5. Disable WhatsApp

Hey there nbarshain,

Thanks so much for using Apple Support Communities.

It's possible that the F8/play button on your keyboard is being treated as a standard function key instead of the key used to control media playback. If so, then you should be able to adjust this functionality right from System Settings by following these steps:

1. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings.

2. Click Keyboard in the sidebar.

3. Click the Keyboard Shortcuts button on the right.

4. Click Function Keys in the sidebar.

5. Turn on “Use F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys”.

That info can also be found here: How to use the function keys on your Mac - Apple Support

We hope this does the trick for you!

Cheers.

@nathan430, this is not the correct fix for this issue. @cbmono's fix did not apply to my system (I don't have WhatsApp installed). Unfortunately, I have not found a fix.

Of all the solutions, this worked for me. Thanks!

This worked for me, thank you so much!

Thank you so much for sharing this! I don't think this would have ever occurred to me to try for a problem with the keyboard.