Spacebar/play stops working

FCPX 10.4.8; when Command 1>2 switching between browser and timeline the spacebar playback stops working for clips in the browser. Clicking on the browser and then hitting spacebar works but as soon as i keyboard shortcut back to timeline and then to browser it stops working again. I've seen online that going to "Window>revert to original layout" is supposed to fix this but "Window>revert to original layout" does not appear in fcp on my macbook pro.

Update: this problem only appears when browser is in list view. It switches from timeline to browser and spacebar plays fine when in filmstrip view. Weird.