Mac Per-App Volume Control: How to Set Different Volume Levels for Each App

macOS has no built-in volume mixer. Every app plays at whatever the system volume is set to, and there's no slider to make Spotify quieter than your video call or Chrome tabs louder than your music. To control volume per app on Mac you need a third-party tool - the most capable option right now is Soundish, but there are a few approaches worth knowing depending on what you actually need.

Why doesn't macOS have a volume mixer like Windows?

Windows has had a per-app volume mixer since Vista - right-click the speaker icon and every running app gets its own slider. Apple has never shipped an equivalent. The macOS audio architecture (Core Audio) is perfectly capable of per-app control; Apple just hasn't exposed it in System Settings.

MacOS does give you one native volume control: the output volume slider in System Settings → Sound → Output, or via the menu bar. That slider affects everything at once. There's no way in stock macOS to say "make Chrome 60% as loud as everything else."

What the free, built-in options can and can't do

Before reaching for a paid app, it's worth knowing exactly where native macOS stops:

System Settings → Sound: one master output volume. No per-app levels.

App-level volume controls: some apps - Spotify, VLC, QuickTime - have their own volume sliders. Dragging Spotify's volume knob down only affects Spotify's own playback, and it works in the sense that the effect is real. But this only works where the app exposes a slider, it doesn't persist across relaunches reliably, and it doesn't help with apps that have no such control (Slack, FaceTime, browser tabs).

AppleScript: you can script the volume of some apps (iTunes/Music, for instance) via AppleScript, but coverage is patchy and it doesn't scale to a general solution.

The short version: if the app you want to control has its own volume slider, use it. If it doesn't - or you want consistent, persistent control across everything - you need something else.

How per-app volume control actually works on Mac

Since macOS 14.2, Apple added a private API called audio taps that lets apps intercept and process per-process audio streams without a kernel extension (kext) or system driver. This is how Soundish 1.5 and later works - it taps each app's audio stream individually, applies your volume setting, and passes the audio on. No password prompt to install a driver, no restart required. macOS asks once for permission to capture system audio (this is how the tap is authorised), and that's it.

Older tools in this space required you to install a virtual audio driver - something like a kernel extension - which needed your admin password and a restart. That approach is increasingly fragile on modern macOS. If you're evaluating tools and any of them asks you to install a system extension during setup, that's worth factoring in.

How to control per-app volume on Mac with Soundish

Soundish lives in the menu bar. Click the icon and you see every app currently producing audio, each with its own volume slider from 0 to 200%. Dragging one app's slider has no effect on anything else.

The practical workflow:

1. Download Soundish and open it. It asks once for audio capture permission - click Allow in the macOS dialog.
2. Play audio in the apps you want to control (they only appear when they're producing sound).
3. Click the Soundish menu bar icon. Each active audio app appears with a slider.
4. Drag to taste. Done.

A few things that are worth knowing:

Volume overdrive up to 200%. If an app is too quiet even with the system volume at maximum - a common problem with video calls where the other person is speaking quietly - you can push that app above 100%. I wrote more about this in the volume overdrive guide.

Per-app mute. There's a mute button next to each app's slider. This is the fastest way to silence a noisy browser tab without touching anything else. See also: how to mute one app without muting everything.

Per-app output routing. Volume and output device are controlled together. You can send Spotify to your speakers and Discord to your headphones from the same popover - a different problem from per-app volume but often solved at the same time.

Profiles. You can save your whole setup - every app's volume, mute state, output device, and EQ - as a named profile and recall it from the popover or a hotkey. Useful if you switch between "working" and "presenting" modes with different audio setups.

Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Electron apps. These are the awkward ones. Browsers and Electron-based apps (Slack, Discord, Zoom) emit audio from helper processes that don't carry the parent app's name. Soundish maps those streams back to the right app so they show up as "Chrome" or "Slack" rather than as orphaned processes. This took longer to build than almost anything else in the app.

Global hotkeys for volume. You can assign a hotkey that raises or lowers the frontmost app's volume without opening the popover. Useful when you're in a video call and want to nudge the volume without clicking away.

Quit Soundish and everything returns to normal. The settings only apply while Soundish is running. If you quit it, every app plays at full system volume again.

Soundish costs $14.99, one-time, after a 7-day free trial with no card required. It requires macOS 14.6 or later on Apple Silicon or Intel.

What if I also need audio equalisation per app?

Since version 1.5, Soundish includes a 10-band EQ per app (31 Hz to 16 kHz, ±12 dB) with presets. You can boost the bass on your music app while leaving your video call flat. The EQ settings are saved per-app and included in profiles. There's a dedicated post on this if you want the details: Mac Equalizer Per App.

If you need Audio Unit plug-in effects - the kind of processing that recording and podcasting workflows depend on - that's where SoundSource ($49) is the right answer. It's more expensive for a reason: it supports the full AU plug-in ecosystem. Soundish doesn't do AU plug-ins, and I'll always say so plainly. For the majority of people who want per-app volume, mute, routing, and EQ, Soundish covers it. For professional audio production workflows with plug-ins, SoundSource is worth the extra money.

Does per-app volume control work with Bluetooth headphones and AirPods?

Yes, with one thing to be aware of. Per-app volume in Soundish is applied to the audio stream before it reaches the output device, so it works regardless of whether you're on built-in speakers, wired headphones, USB audio, or Bluetooth. You can route one app to AirPods and another to speakers, and set their volumes independently. The Mac AirPods routing guide covers that setup in full.

The one wrinkle with Bluetooth: macOS's own volume control is sometimes greyed out for Bluetooth or HDMI outputs - that's a separate issue with the output device, not with per-app control. Soundish's per-app sliders still work in that situation because they operate on the stream before it hits the output stage.

Common questions

Does per-app volume control work on Intel Macs, or only Apple Silicon?

Soundish works on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14.6 or later. The audio tap API it uses is available on both architectures. The one feature that's Apple Silicon only is external monitor volume control over DDC.

Will per-app volume settings survive a restart?

Yes. Soundish saves each app's volume, mute state, and output setting and restores them the next time the app produces audio. You don't need to set things up again after a reboot. If you want to snapshot and restore complete configurations - including EQ - use audio profiles.

Can I control the volume of browser tabs individually, or only the whole browser?

Soundish controls volume at the process level, which means the whole browser (all Chrome tabs together, for instance). Individual tab volume control isn't possible through this mechanism - it would require the browser itself to expose per-tab audio streams, which none currently do. If a specific tab is too loud, the practical fix is to mute the tab from within the browser (right-click the tab, Mute Tab) and set the browser's overall volume where you want it in Soundish.