brave [little] meme

XBMC/Mac adds Harmony remote support

So, you have a Mac, you like XBMC, but you’ve been frustrated by the application’s lack of extensive support for your Harmony universal remote. Well, mope no more.

A new version of XBMC’s remote helper application has been made available. Although unlikely to see the light of day in XBMC’s upcoming Babylon release, the new helper is relatively easy to install by following the simple instructions below.

I have tested this on my MacBook Pro/Harmony One setup running the latest XBMC SVN and it works as advertised. I’s highly recommend the new helper to any Harmony user.

To get your Harmony working in XBMC:

- Add a new device mapping in your Logitech software for Media Center PC > Plex > Plex Player.

- Download the new new XBMCHelper

- Run Activity Monitor and kill the XBMCHelper process if it’s running

- Find your XBMC application in your Applications folder, right click, and “Show Package Contents.” 

- Replace /Application/XBMC.app/Contents/Resources/XBMC/tools/osx/XBMCHelper with the new version.

- Type this in Terminal: “chmod +x /Applications/XBMC.app/Contents/Resources/XBMC/tools/osx/XBMCHelper.”

- In XBMC, ensure AppleRemote is enabled and set to “Standard” (Settings->System->AppleRemote)

- Download an updated Keymap.xml and copy it to ~/Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/.

Run XBMC once and you should be good to go! You may need to disable/enable the remote under Settings to get it to kick in, but after that you should be able to launch XBMC by pressing the Menu key on your Harmony, and navigate the application with full page up/page down support, play/stop/pause, info and custom shortcuts.

You can find the related thread on the XBMC forums here.