Mac Volume Too Loud at Lowest Setting? Go Quieter

It's midnight. You're wearing headphones. You press volume down until you're at the lowest notch, one bar. It's still too loud. The next press is mute. There's nothing in between.

This is a common complaint with headphones and sensitive speakers. macOS has 16 volume steps, and the lowest one can still be louder than you want for quiet late-night listening.

Built-in fix: quarter-step volume

Most Mac users don't know this: you can get 4x finer volume control with a modifier key.

Hold Option + Shift and press the volume up or down keys. Each press changes the volume by a quarter of a normal step, so you get 64 steps instead of 16.

That gap between "one bar" and "mute" now has three more levels you can land on. For late-night headphone listening, this is often enough.

Lower the app, not just the Mac

Some apps are louder than others at the same system volume. Music mastered loud will feel much louder than a quietly recorded podcast or video at the same setting.

So check the app itself: Music, Spotify, video players and browsers' video players usually have their own volume slider. Set the system to one bar and turn the loud app down inside the app to go below the system minimum. In Music, Sound Check (Music > Settings > Playback) also evens out loudness between songs.

Go below the minimum per app

The quarter steps and in-app sliders help, but quarter steps still change every app at once, and many apps have no volume control of their own. If Spotify at the lowest step is too loud but your Zoom call at the same step is too quiet, you're stuck.

SoundDial gives every running app its own volume slider in the menu bar, from 0% to 200%. You can set Spotify to 5% and Zoom to 40% at the same time, so one app goes far below what the system minimum allows without touching the others. More on this in per-app volume control on Mac.

For late-night headphone use:

• Set the system volume to a moderate level
• Lower each app in SoundDial to exactly the level you want
• Music at a few percent for barely-there background sound
• Browser a bit higher for quiet late-night video
• Mute any app whose alerts you don't want to hear

SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac needs macOS 14.2 or later and costs €14.99 one-time purchase on the Mac App Store, no subscription.

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.