How can I access and control the media sources playing on Windows in C#?

Question

I would like to create a program that can manually change the priority of media being played on my PC using C#.

This is because the Play/Pause button on my keyboard does not stick to the program I want it to.

In my mind the media being played would be stored in a stack and I want to push the program I want to access to the top for the keyboard to Play/Pause it. The stack for example:

• Spotify
• YouTube (Chrome)
• Netflix (Opera)

The item at the top (Spotify) would be the one accessed by the Play/Pause key.

I'm not sure how Windows handles this at all so any information would be greatly appreciated.

I haven't tried anything as I do not know where to start, or if this is even possible.

Answer 1

You can change the media priority in windows by getting the proccess and setting its priority like this :

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace ProcessRealtime
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // Define the names of the media processes
            string[] mediaProcesses = new string[] { "Spotify", "Chrome", "Opera" };

            // Loop through the media processes
            foreach (string mediaProcess in mediaProcesses)
            {
                // Get the processes by name
                Process[] processes = Process.GetProcessesByName(mediaProcess);

                // Loop through the processes
                foreach (Process proc in processes)
                {
                    // Change the priority to RealTime
                    proc.PriorityClass = ProcessPriorityClass.RealTime;

                    // Print a message
                    Console.WriteLine("Changed priority for {0} to RealTime", proc.ProcessName);
                }
            }

            // Wait for a key press
            Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit...");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

You could then add something like a eventlistener for the defined key combinations so that you can switch the current prio.