Update: Use Fluid, with this awesome icon by Wilson Miner, and name it “Rdio Desktop” and follow these same instructions for a much better experience. You will also need to edit the macros and change Next/Previous track to use arrow keys instead of ctrl+arrow.

I’m not going into much details, as it’s been a long frustrating day dealing with a number of things today, but I wanted to share how I managd to actually get Rdio Desktop to not suck (well, more like make it bearable). What do I mean by this? After many hours I discovered how I could remap the media keys on my OS X keyboard to work with Rdio Desktop. Ugh.

Remapping media keys to function keys

To get us started, you’ll want to install KeyRemap4MacBook will allow you to use your existing function keys, and simple swap the media keys so that they actually send normal function keypresses. This is needed because Apple doesn’t feel it nescesary to allow you to remap them otherwise.

Pop it open and search for media. Tick the box next to whichever setting applies to your keyboard.

Creating macros for Rdio Desktop

Now that we can actually bind go the media keys, you’re going to need to create some macros to work with the Air app. Why do you have to do this? Because Adobe Air is a crappy framework that no one should ever build apps with. To do this you’re going to need to install KeyboardMaestro. Now while I had to follow a guide to creating these macros, I find that a pretty big waste of time. So save yourself some time, and download and run the macros I created via the aforementioned guide over at DropBox, and you’re good to go.

Complain to developers

Hopefully you found this guide very quickly and didn’t waste time digging for solutions. However, many people didn’t have it so easy. I encourage you to complain to any developer you ever meet who thinks its a good idea to build an Adobe {Air,Flash,Anything else that sucks} application and explain to them how much hell they put people through.