How can I set up a custom keyboard shortcut for volume control?

Question

Hi all,
I use my black MacBook at work, connected to an external monitor and external keyboard. I'm looking for a way to set up the F buttons on my external keyboard as volume control, just as they do on my laptop keyboard. Looking for F3 to F5 to be volume mute, down, and up, respectively.
I tried going into Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences but since there is no menu item for volume control I can't seem to add it. Anyone know how I can go about doing this or what I'm missing?
Thanks
Mike

Answer 1

paste the following into Applescrpt Editor (it's in /Applications/Utilities)
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #ADD8E6;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
set curVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)
-- work out the new setting
if curVolume < 96 then
set newVolume to curVolume + 5
else
-- can't go over 100
set newVolume to 100
end if
-- and apply it
set volume output volume newVolume</pre>
this script will increase volume by 5 (out of 100) any time you run it. you can adjust this of course. save the script somewhere.
You can use a 3rd part app launcher to bind a keyboard shortcut to it. I use Butler. there are many others: Quicksilver, ikeys, quickeys, Spark, Launchbar.
this will work the fastest.
If you don't want to use 3rd party tools for this you can make a service using automator but that might be a bit slower than the first option. open automator. it will give you a pulldown screen wiuth the choice of what you want to make. choose "service". set it to receive no input and be available in all applications. add the following "run apple script" action to the service
<pre style="
font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-size: 10px;
margin: 0px;
padding: 5px;
border: 1px solid #000000;
width: 720px;
color: #000000;
background-color: #ADD8E6;
overflow: auto;"
title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
on run {input, parameters}
set curVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)
-- work out the new setting
if curVolume < 96 then
set newVolume to curVolume + 5
else
-- can't go over 100
set newVolume to 100
end if
-- and apply it
set volume output volume newVolume
end run</pre>
save the service, go to keyboard system preferences->keyboard shortcuts->services and make a shortcut for the service you just created.