Adding Media Keyboard support to Surface Pro 3

The Surface Pro 3’s Type Cover hits the mark for most uses but the lack of native multimedia keys (Next Track, Previous Track) is a sore point that needed addressing. Read on.

Since we can’t bind key combinations in Windows 8 we’ll use the excellent/free AutoHotkey to bind our multimedia key combinations (e.g. CTRL+RIGHT fires the Next Track action).

  1. Download and install AutoHotkey from their home page
  2. Open AutoHotkey
  3. On the first start it will prompt you to generate a first sample AutoHotkey script
  4. Copy and paste the following script into the sample script
    ;next song
    ^Right:: ;the ^ means CTRL
    Send {Media_Next}
    return
    ;previous song
    ^Left::
    Send {Media_Prev}
    return
  5. Save the AutoHotkey script file
  6. Close and re-open AutoHotkey to enable the new multimedia key combinations