Ultimate Media Control

Keyboards or mice that come with designated buttons for multimedia playback, although some users may not use them at all, can come in handy in certain situations. Ideally, you want to control your multimedia playback without getting distracted, which is what these buttons can help with.

It’s really not an issue if you don’t have any such buttons on your device. Ultimate Media Control helps you set up a series of hotkeys to quickly manage multimedia playback, while curiously also giving you the option to use tray icons as an alternative.

Using hotkeys to manage multimedia playback works as you would expect. Hotkeys are disabled by default, but you can enable and configure them in the program. Interestingly, you’re limited to three-button combinations, so I’d recommend tweaking your hotkeys to make them easy to reach throughout.

After taking care of that, you can enjoy your multimedia playback as you would normally. Switch between songs, pause what’s currently playing, raise or lower your volume, and mute/unmute your microphone on-demand. I found the mic mute to be especially useful.

The app claims to also offer users the ability to control their music through a series of tray icons. Clicking on one of those icons would execute the respective action: switch between tunes, raise or lower volume, the works.

During my testing, this only worked to a point. Raising or lowering volume, as well as muting or unmuting my microphone, all good. But nothing happened when trying to switch songs or pause what was currently playing. Using hotkeys instead worked without fault.

Ultimate Media Control is a solution that helps users control their multimedia more conveniently. The hotkey functionalities worked well, but I can’t say the same about the tray icons.