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QuickTime Player Keyboard Focus Bug

I've come across a bug in QuickTime Player, and only yesterday while watching about 40 of Aperture 2.0's tutorial videos did I discover how to reproduce the bug 100%. This bug certainly existed under 10.5.1 (and prior to QuickTime 7.4.1), but remains today under 10.5.2 and the latest system software and QuickTime updates.

Anyway, here's how to reproduce the bug.

  1. Open a movie file in QuickTime Player. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of movie file it is - a .m4v or a .mov will be fine.
  2. Hit the space bar a few times. The movie plays and pauses. Hit the up/down arrow keys and the volume changes. All is well.
  3. Enter full screen mode (cmd-F). The same keys continue to work.
  4. Exit full-screen mode (cmd-F). Press the same keys. They don't work, and instead you get the standard "you idiot!" alert sound.
  5. Click the video portion of the QuickTime Player window itself (your movie, if it was playing, will probably pause). Now, the space bar and arrow keys work again.


The expected behavior, of course, would be that the keys always work. Instead, it's almost as if the movie loses keyboard focus when it comes out of full-screen mode.

Where that focus goes in the meantime is beyond me. The only visual clue I've noticed is that the triangle above the playback progress bar will change to a hollow form when the bug is displaying improper behavior and will go solid when the keys work properly.

P.S. Left and right arrow keys exhibit the same behavior - they move frame by frame when possible, but don't when coming out of full-screen mode.

P.P.S. rdar://5739490

One Response to "QuickTime Player Keyboard Focus Bug"

  1. I think it's an overall Leopard thing. I keep hitting focus bugs. The one I can repeat the most is in OmniFocus. If OmniFocus is the front most application window and the machine goes to screen saver, when I get rid of the screen saver ( password protected ), OmniFocus is the front most application, but not a single Key command works, this includes CMD-Q. I don't know if it's just OmniFocus, but I'm going to try and reproduce with other apps.