Beats headphone cord control not working on Macbook

If you are using a Beats or Apple headphone on your Macbook to listen to your favourite Spotify playlists, you might have noticed that not all cord-controls are properly working.

In my case, I could control the volume (+ and ) but when I was using the middle-button to skip or stop a Spotify track, the iTunes app started but nothing else happend.

After reading several forum posts I have found a working fix called “Play Button iTunes Patch” which you can download here.

This patch works by modifying a system file (rcd). With the new System Integrity Protection (SIP) functionality introduced in El Capitan you have to take additional steps to temporarily disable SIP. Hopefully I will get some time soon to update the binary to guide through this, but for now here is what you have to do.

1. Boot into recovery
2. Launch terminal once booted into recovery: Utilities menu > Terminal
3. Disable SIP: csrutil disable
4. Restart and log in as you would normally. Validate that SIP is disabled by running the following command in terminal: csrutil status It should say disabled.
5. Run the iTunes Patch dmg and continue with the patching.
6. Once the GUI shows that it has successfully patched, boot back into recovery to re-enable SIP.
7. Launch terminal once booted into recovery: Utilities menu > Terminal
8. Re-enable SIP: csrutil enable
9. Restart. The patch should be applied now without disabling SIP forever.

Use on your own risk! For support you can contact the developer on GitHub

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