How to open & close CD / DVD drawer with your keyboard or mouse

I go through a lot of CDs & DVDs, and constantly reaching over to push that little button on the front of the CD/DVD drive is rather annoying. I do not have one of those nifty keyboards that has those media buttons. So, I looked for a way to open and close my drawer from the keyboard, or with the mouse. And I found a few ways to do it.

Using a keyboard shortcut

1. Go to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts
2. Find the entry for Eject. It’s under the Sound group.
3. Click with the left or right mouse button on Eject
4. You’ll see in the right hand column it now says New accelerator…
5. Now you just hit the keyboard shortcut you want to use. You’ll notice that I have F12, and for that you just hit the F12 key
   • If you want to have a multiple key combination, that’s fine too. For example, you can hit [CTRL] + [ALT] + [INSERT], and now every time you hit those three keys, your CD drawer will open, or close.

Adding a custom launcher to the Desktop or Panel

1. Right click on a panel and select Add to Panel…
2. Select Custom Application Launcher and click the Add button
3. Now you’ll have a little box that looks like the one pictured below, only emptier
4. For the Command, type in:

   eject -T

5. Give it a name, and a description if you like.
6. Click on the icon on the left and you’ll be able to select your icon from a list
7. Click OK, and enjoy opening and closing the CD/DVD drawer with a click of your mouse