How to automatically pause iTunes when you unplug your headphones
November 11, 2008 by Ross McKillop
Using the very neat (and open source/free) software Breakaway, each time you unplug your headphones from your Mac, iTunes will pause. When you plug them back in, iTunes resumes playing.
Just download Breakaway, unzip it, and drag it to your Applications folder. Launch it from there.
You’ll notice a new icon in your Menu - a small and rather unobtrusive “plus sign”. Click it and select Preferences… from the drop-down menu.
The first Preference page is General, and I’ve found leaving all the default settings as they are works for me.
Select the Plugins tab. If you happen to use VLC as your movie/video player (I do), select VLC Plugin from the left menu, and then place a check in the box labeled VLC Plugin in the right window. Now when you’re watching a movie using VLC and you unplug your headphones, the movie will pause.
Finally, select the Advanced tab. Again, I found leaving the default settings alone works best for me, but feel free to experiment.
Exit out of the Breakaway Preferences and launch iTunes. Plug in your headphones and start playing a song. Now unplug your headphones. iTunes will pause - pretty darn cool! If you have Growl installed, you’ll also get a notification message each time your headphones are unplugged/plugged in.
As someone who works in coffee shops a lot of the time, this app is a fantastic little helper that can avoid some embarrassment when I accidentally unplug my headphones and music starts blasting out the speakers of my MacBook Pro.
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!