How to lower the volume of one app on a Mac, from the built in partial answers to a real per app mixer

To lower the volume of one app on a Mac, check that app's own volume control first, because macOS has no built in per app slider anywhere. If the app has no control of its own, and most do not, a per app mixer adds one: a separate volume for every app currently making sound, with the system level left alone.

Taperlark makes Submix, the per app mixer named later in this post. The options that cost nothing come first, including the ones that involve no download at all.

How to lower the volume of one app on a Mac, fastest first

1. Use the app's own slider. Music, Spotify, VLC, most games, and the player controls on a YouTube video all carry a volume control of their own. If the loud app is one of these, you are done in two clicks, nothing installed. A Settings pane with an audio tab beats installing anything.
2. Check a meeting app's audio settings. Most meeting and chat apps keep an output volume control somewhere in their own settings, and Discord goes further with a volume slider per person in a call. A call that is too loud is often fixable inside the call app itself.
3. Mute instead, when silence is enough. Safari marks any tab playing audio with a speaker icon in the tab itself; one click silences that tab. Chrome can mute an entire site from the tab's context menu. Neither makes anything quieter by degrees, but for an autoplaying ad, silence was the goal anyway.
4. Lower alert sounds separately. System Settings, then Sound, includes a dedicated alert volume slider. It is the one genuinely separate volume control macOS ships, and it covers system alert sounds only, no apps.
5. Install a per app mixer for everything else. When the loud app has no slider and mute is too blunt, a mixer gives every running app its own volume row. The rest of this post covers that path.

Per app volume control on a Mac: what is built in, and where it stops

The Sound pane in System Settings has an output picker, an input picker, and one volume slider, and that slider moves every app at once. Turn it down for the browser and your music drops with it. The alert slider above is the only category macOS splits out, and it reaches nothing you would call an app.

The boundary shows up in ordinary moments: a game at full blast over a quiet podcast, a video call fighting a YouTube tab, an app whose sound effects you want at half strength while everything else stays put. Each of those is one app needing its own number, and that is precisely what the system slider cannot express.

Audio MIDI Setup does not close the gap either, although it is regularly suggested as if it did. It combines physical output devices into bigger logical ones; it has no concept of an app, so it cannot make one quieter. Why macOS never shipped a real mixer, and what Apple finally changed in macOS 14.2, is a story of its own. The short version: until that release, the operating system offered third party developers no supported way to touch one app's audio, which is why every option below is either newer than macOS 14.2 or built on a workaround that predates it.

Control the volume of individual apps with a mixer

A per app mixer lists every app currently making sound and gives each one its own volume and mute. Since macOS 14.2, the modern ones work through a process tap: a supported Apple API that reads one app's audio from inside an ordinary application, scales it, and passes it to your output, with no driver installed and no admin password asked.

Free covers real ground here. FineTune is open source, tap based, and its README asks for macOS 15.0 or later. Background Music is the long standing free option for older Macs; it works through a virtual audio driver instead, its README labels it alpha and stereo only, and when it misbehaves after a macOS update, that has a troubleshooting guide of its own.

Submix is mine and it is the paid, focused version of the same tap based idea: volume, mute, and a live level meter on every row, plus per app output routing and boost, on Apple silicon Macs recent enough for the tap API. It installs no driver and asks for exactly one permission, macOS audio recording. Two limits, stated plainly: there is no equalizer, and nothing you set survives quitting the app. The wider field, SoundSource included, is compared honestly elsewhere if you want every option on one table.

What a mixer's app list shows, and why an app is missing

A tap based mixer lists apps by what Core Audio reports as actually producing sound, and that has three visible consequences worth knowing before you rely on one. An app that has not played anything since launch has no row yet; press play once and it appears. Helper processes get folded back into the app you recognise, so a browser's crowd of background helpers shows up as one row for the browser rather than a dozen mystery entries. And system alert chimes are filtered out of Submix's list entirely, which keeps you from accidentally silencing the machine's own warnings; the separate alert slider in Sound settings already covers those.

One more behaviour reads as a bug until you know the reason. Changing where an app's audio goes tears its whole chain down and rebuilds it against the new destination, so switching an app's output mid playback causes a brief, expected interruption. Volume changes carry no such cost. Only the destination does.

Make one app quieter without touching everything else

The situation this exists for: music playing, a call coming up in ten minutes, and a browser tab that just started shouting. The system slider punishes all three equally. A mixer punishes only the guilty one.

In Submix the sequence is short. Open the mixer from the menu bar and every app currently producing sound has a row; drag the loud app's slider down and nothing else moves. Mute is one click and instant to reverse, because muting sets that app's gain to zero without tearing its connection down, so unmuting resumes sound immediately rather than reconnecting.

Two honest mechanics to know before you rely on it. A row appears only once an app actually produces sound, so you cannot pre set a volume for an app that has been silent all session. And per app levels are session state: quit the mixer and every app returns to full volume on its normal output. That second point is the design, documented along with everything else the app does and does not install, not a surprise to discover later.

If the offender is a browser, weigh the zero install moves from the top of this post first: Safari's tab mute and Chrome's site mute. A mixer earns its place when you want the tab audible, just smaller, or when the noise comes from an app with no controls at all.

Zoom louder than your music

The call that is too quiet against everything else is the same problem mirrored. Check the meeting app's own audio settings first, since most keep an output volume control of their own and raising it there may end the exercise. When it is already at full, the better move is counterintuitive: lower everything else. Drag the music app's row down and leave the call at full volume. Lowering a stream costs nothing, while boosting one has a real cost: Submix's boost is a straight multiply capped at 2.0x with no limiter behind it, so a voice already near full scale will clip if you push it. Reach for boost when the source itself is genuinely quiet, a soft spoken podcast or an under recorded video, and reach for the music slider the rest of the time.

There are two adjacent tricks worth knowing. If the fight is between two outputs rather than two volumes, send the call to your headphones and the music to your speakers; separated streams do not need balancing at all. And if you want the music to duck automatically whenever a call starts, that specific automation is a feature SoundDial's App Store listing describes, and Submix does not do it today. Match the tool to the reflex you actually want.

Changelog: first published September 2026.