How to Individually Control Audio Volume for Each App on Your Mac
When you’re trying to listen to audio using your MacBook – whether you’re playing Spotify while you work or editing a video project – chances are good that you don’t need to constantly interrupt loud notification sounds from your messaging apps. Unfortunately, unlike Windows , macOS does not have a built-in utility that lets you control the alert volume for individual applications. If you want to set your message or Slack volume to 20% and music volume to 60%, you’ll have to rely on third-party apps to get the job done. We found two great ones.
BackgroundMusic: A free application that allows you to individually adjust the volume of the application.
BackgroundMusic is a free app that lets you set different volume levels for each app running on macOS. It places an icon on the menu bar, which, when clicked, displays volume levels for various applications, which can be easily adjusted using a slider.
While BackgroundMusic works fine, its user interface is not the best, especially on small screens. Not everyone has a 27-inch iMac, and for those of us with 13-inch MacBooks, it will feel a little cramped. One problem is that the app is displaying more than it needs to – I see 13 apps listed on my computer, including some image editing and recording apps that don’t send notifications or play sound. The ability to pin your favorite apps is sorely lacking here, and if you select the More Apps option, you’ll scroll through an insanely long list to find the app you want.
Having said that, the music score is free, which makes it easier to live with these minor annoyances. You can download BackgroundMusic on GitHub ( Big Sur compatible version and older versions available separately).
SoundSource: The Best Advanced Sound Management App on Mac
Rogue Amoeba is one of the best in the industry when it comes to creating audio apps for macOS, and SoundSource is one of its standout apps. Not only does it let you control the volume levels for each app, but it also lets you route audio from each app to different devices. You can ask the app to play sounds from Music or Spotify only through headphones, by default directing Zoom audio to your Mac’s built-in speakers. You can tweak these settings as you like and even pin frequently used apps to the top of the list.
SoundSource also has other advanced features, including the ability to add sound effects or apply equalizer settings for each app separately. The free version allows you to try all of its features for 20 minutes each time you launch SoundSource, after which the sound quality will “degrade” (or so the app developer puts it). If you like what it does well enough to spend some money, you can purchase the full app for $ 39.