Next / previous track media keys don't work if navigated to album/playlist

[stephen304]

This issue respects the following points:

• This issue is not already reported on GitHub (I've searched it).
• I agree to follow Jellyfin's Code of Conduct.
• This report addresses only a single issue; If you encounter multiple issues, kindly create separate reports for each one.

Describe the bug

When playing back music, I'm able to play/pause using my keyboard media Play/Pause button, but for some reason the next track / previous track buttons often do not work when I navigate to a playlist or album before playing it.

The Play/pause button always works for me, only the forward/back buttons are inconsistent depending on whether I navigated before playing (broken) or landed on a page and started playing without navigating (works fine).

Reproduction Steps

1. Load jellyfin in Firefox
2. Navigate to a playlist or album
3. Click on the first song
4. Press media key next track (doesn't work)
5. Press media key play/pause (works)

For some reason, this DOES work:

1. Load direct url of a specific album / playlist
2. Click on the first song
3. Press media key next - works fine

Also interestingly, this also DOES work:

1. Load home page url
2. Click play on album on homescreen without navigating
3. Use next track media key - works fine

As well as:

1. Load direct URL of playlists page
2. Click play on playlist without navigating to playlist
3. Use next track media key - works fine

Expected/Actual behaviour

It should go to next/previous song

Logs

No relevant logs are generated

Server version

10.10.6

Web version

10.10.6

Build version

10.10.6

Platform

Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS with Docker

Browser

Firefox

Additional information

I investigated the event listener at

jellyfin-web/src/scripts/keyboardNavigation.js

Line 127 in 48f9111

window.addEventListener('keydown', function (e) {

And overrode the main jellyfin bundle to add a console.log at the beginning of the event listener and noticed that it prints when Ctrl / Alt is pressed but not any of the media keys, which makes sense because it bails if hasMediaSession anyways. I have mediaSession in my navigator so I assume the media keys are handled through another code path which is causing the issue.

So in summary, it seems like the act of navigating to a playlist or album causes the prev/next media keys to stop working, but curiously the play/pause keeps working. If I play anything directly after landing on the page without navigating (by loading the direct URL of an album, playlist, or page that lets you play either without navigating eg home/playlists), the issue is also avoided.

[dmitrylyzo]

Probably related: #5208