eqMac Alternative for Per-App Volume on Mac

If you searched for eqMac, there's a good chance the problem you actually want solved is this one: one app is too loud or too quiet, and macOS only gives you one volume slider for everything. This page is about that problem, independent volume for each app, and how to get it on a Mac.

What macOS can do on its own

macOS has no built-in per-app volume mixer. The volume in the menu bar and Control Center is one system-wide level. Before installing anything, these native options help:

• Use the app's own volume control. Music, many video players and most call apps (Zoom, Teams, Discord) have their own volume or output level in their settings. Lowering it there affects only that app.
• Use finer system steps. Hold Option + Shift while pressing the volume keys to change system volume in quarter steps.
• Mute notifications instead of the Mac. System Settings > Notifications lets you turn off sounds for a noisy app.

The limits: many apps have no volume control at all, nothing native lets one app go above 100%, and juggling each app's own slider gets tedious.

Per-app volume with SoundDial

SoundDial is a menu-bar app that does exactly this one job:

• A volume slider for every app you have open: Music at 40%, a browser at 100%, a video call at 70%, all at once
• Per-app mute: silence one noisy app without touching anything else
• Per-app boost: push one quiet app above 100%, up to 200%, without making everything else louder
• Lower one app without touching the others

It works per app, not per browser tab: all tabs of one browser share one slider. It doesn't record anything. It needs macOS 14.2 or later and costs €14.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store, no subscription. More on how this works: per-app volume control on Mac.

Other Mac tools for per-app volume

Since you're comparing tools:

• SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba costs $49 and is sold directly, not through the Mac App Store.
• Background Music is free and open source.
• eqMac is another Mac audio app; check its own website for what it currently offers.

Side-by-side pages: SoundSource alternative · Background Music alternative · FineTune alternative. There's also a longer roundup in best volume mixer apps for Mac.

Quick setup

1. Install SoundDial from the Mac App Store.
2. Click the menu-bar icon. Every running app shows up with its own slider.
3. Lower what's too loud, mute what you don't need, and boost anything too quiet.

If per-app volume is what you were after, SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac, is the focused option.

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.