This is going to be a quick post but every time I need to do this I always forget how so I wanted to put it down someplace.

Every now and then you need to make a connection from Computer A to Computer B but Computer A can not make a direct connection to Computer B (because of a firewall or something similar). If you have a computer that A can reach and that can reach B, which we will call the Middle Man, then you can set up a tunnel through the Middle Man from A to B.(See the diagram below)

If you run the following code below on Computer A, and then connect to localhost instead of Computer B, your traffic will be routed through the Middle Man and to Computer B.

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ssh -f -L [port_#]:[computer_b_hostname]:[port_#] [username]@[middle_man_hostname] -N

Google Music is a great service, I am able to listen to my whole library from any computer that has a web browser, with out having to copy all the files over. This is a huge advantages of using a web application like Google Music but there are also some disadvantages.

While I really enjoyed using the service every time I had to pause my music or skip I had to find the browser window and tab that was playing the music and click the button, this to me quickly became a huge pain. This is the biggest drawback of web apps in my opinion, they just do not integrate into the native workflow as well as a native app.

So what is a developer to do in this situation, write some code to fix it, and today I am sharing that with everyone else. Google Music Keys is a small native Mac app that allows you to use global shortcut keys, or the Mac keyboard media Keys to control Google Music in your browser(safari or chrome). I have also open sourced the code so others can hack on it use the same functions for other projects.

I would also like to thank Terin Stock for GSDesktopHelper which I used as the base for this project.

You can find the download link and more information Here