Mac Notification Sounds Too Loud in Headphones? Fix

You're wearing headphones, listening to music at a comfortable volume. A Slack notification fires. It's far louder than your music, and you pull your headphones off.

This happens because macOS has one main volume slider for everything. Your music might sit at a comfortable level, but alert and notification sounds, from Slack pings to Calendar reminders and macOS system sounds, play under that same slider.

Why notifications sound louder than music

Notification sounds are short, sharp sounds designed to get your attention, so they're loud at their peak by design. Music is mixed for sustained listening, with quieter and louder passages.

The system volume scales both by the same amount, but they start from very different levels. So at a volume where your music is comfortable, a ping can still be startling.

In headphones it feels worse: the sound goes straight into your ears, so a sharp ping stands out even more against quiet music.

Built-in ways to reduce notification volume

Lower the alert volume

macOS has a separate Alert volume slider. Go to System Settings > Sound and look for it. It controls macOS alert sounds separately from the main volume.

Limitation: it's meant for system alerts. Apps like Slack, Discord or Teams often play their own notification sounds, so this slider may not change them.

Turn off notification sounds per app

Go to System Settings > Notifications, select the app that's too loud, and turn off "Play sound for notification". This silences that app's notification sounds.

Limitation: it's all or nothing. You can't make the app's sounds quieter this way, only on or off, and you lose the audio cue that tells you something happened.

Use Focus

Focus modes (Do Not Disturb, Work and so on) can silence notifications from all or selected apps. Useful during deep work, but not practical all day if you need to notice messages.

Control notification apps independently

What you actually want: make Slack quieter without making your music quieter. macOS doesn't do that with its built-in controls.

SoundDial does. It gives every running app its own volume slider in the menu bar, so you can lower apps that ping a lot while keeping your music where it is. That's per-app volume control: one app lower, the others untouched.

A headphone-friendly setup

• Spotify / Music: 50%, a comfortable listening level
• Slack: 15%, noticeable but not startling
• Zoom / FaceTime: 90%, clear call audio
• Browser: 40%, close to your music for video

Any app you don't want to hear at all can be muted on its own. For macOS system alerts, combine this with the Alert volume slider above.

SoundDial works per app, not per browser tab, and doesn't record anything. More about SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac.

SoundDial is a €14.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store, no subscription, and needs macOS 14.2 or later. Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.