How to Set a Different Volume for Each App on a Mac
You are on a call, music is playing, and turning one down turns both down. Or a game is twice as loud as everything else and the only fix is the system volume. This is one of the oldest complaints about macOS, and the short answer is that Apple has never shipped a fix for it.
Here is what is actually going on, and what your options are.
Why macOS has no per-app volume
A Mac has one output volume. Applications send audio to the system, the system mixes it and sends the result to your speakers or headphones, and the volume keys act on the final mix. There is no per-application stage in that chain that you can reach from System Settings. Windows has had a per-app volume mixer since 2007. macOS still has nothing equivalent.
A few apps have their own internal volume slider, which is worth checking before you install anything. Music, VLC and most browsers playing video will have one. It only helps for that one app, and it is usually buried.
What actually works
1. The free option: Background Music
Background Music is a free, open-source utility with close to twenty thousand stars on GitHub. It gives every app a volume slider and can auto-pause your music when something else starts playing.
The trade-off: it installs a virtual audio device on your system to do this, it is still described as alpha by its own author, and it has several hundred open issues. On some Macs it works perfectly for years. On others it fights with the system audio and you spend an evening removing it. It costs nothing to find out which kind of Mac you have, so try it first.
2. The $19 option: SoundTune
SoundTune puts a volume slider next to every app that is making sound, in a menu bar panel. Sliders run from silence to 200%, each app remembers its level, and a mute button beside each one silences that app alone without pausing it.
It uses the audio tap support Apple added in macOS 14.4 rather than a virtual audio device, so nothing is installed at system level and there is no restart. An app sitting at 100% is never tapped at all — its audio takes the normal path, untouched — so the app is only in the signal path when it has something to do. Boosting past 100% runs through a limiter, so a quiet recording gets louder instead of distorted.
It needs macOS 14.4 or later, and it does per-app volume and output switching. It has no equaliser and no plugin support, which is the honest reason it costs less than the next option.
3. The $49 option: SoundSource
SoundSource from Rogue Amoeba is the established application in this category and does considerably more: a ten-band equaliser, Audio Unit plugins per app, sending a single app to a different output device or AirPlay speaker, Shortcuts automation, and volume keys that work on HDMI and DisplayPort. It requires macOS 15 or later.
If you want any of that, it is the right purchase and the extra money is not the interesting part of the decision.
What does not work
Picking one
SoundTune is a single download for Apple silicon and Intel Macs, needs macOS 14.4 or later, and has no account, no tracking and no network access. Get SoundTune for $19, or read the full comparison with SoundSource.
Prices and system requirements checked September 2026.