How to Mute Everything Except One App on Your Mac

You're on a video call. A browser tab starts an autoplay ad, Spotify is still running, a game pings in the background and Slack chimes. You want to hear one thing, the call, and nothing else.

macOS can't do that on its own. The volume keys control one thing: the master output level. Turn it down and everything goes down together. Mute it and everything goes silent, including the one app you wanted to hear.

Why macOS can't do this natively

Windows has a Volume Mixer where every running app gets its own slider. macOS has never shipped one. There is a single system volume, and every app plays through it at once. So "keep this one, silence the rest" is not something the built-in controls can express.

Native workarounds

These help in some cases, each with a catch.

1. Quit or pause the other apps

The simplest option: pause Spotify, close the noisy tab, quit the game.

The catch: you lose what those apps were doing, and you have to remember to start them again later.

2. Turn off notification sounds

Go to System Settings > Notifications, pick an app and turn off its notification sound. A Focus mode (such as Do Not Disturb) can silence notifications from many apps at once.

The catch: this only covers notifications. Music, videos, game audio and anything else an app plays keep going.

3. Use each app's own volume or mute

Some apps have their own volume control or mute option: music players, video players, many games. Browsers let you mute a tab from the tab itself.

The catch: every app does it differently, many apps have no control at all, and you have to visit each one, then undo it all later.

The straightforward way: a per-app mixer

A per-app volume mixer gives each app its own volume slider and mute button. With one, isolating a single app takes a few clicks:

1. Open the mixer from your menu bar. You see the apps you have open.
2. Find the one app you want to hear: your call, your stream, your game.
3. Mute every other app, or pull its slider to zero.
4. The app you left alone keeps playing while the rest stay silent.

Muting "everything except one" is really the inverse of muting one app. You're not silencing your Mac, you're silencing the noise around the thing you care about. If you only need to quiet a single noisy app, see how to mute one app on Mac.

Boost the one app you kept

There's a bonus: you can also make the remaining app louder than your Mac normally allows. Quiet video calls or poorly mastered streams can be hard to hear even at full volume. Raising the system volume would also raise the apps you only turned down. A per-app boost raises just the one app.

So the full move is: mute the noise, keep your one app, and if it's too quiet, boost it.

Doing it with SoundDial

SoundDial is a menu-bar app that gives each running app its own volume slider and a one-click mute. To hear only one app:

• Click the SoundDial icon in the menu bar
• Click mute next to each app you don't want to hear
• Leave your call, stream or game playing, and drag its slider above 100% (up to 200%) if it's too quiet

Muted apps keep running, they just make no sound. Click mute again to bring one back. If you set up the same "only this app" mix often, save it as a profile (Save in the panel footer) and click its chip next time to apply it to the apps that are running. It works per app, not per browser tab, so all tabs of a browser share one slider. More on this: mute one app on Mac.

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.

Quick recap

• macOS has no per-app volume control, so muting all apps but one needs a mixer.
• Native options (quitting apps, notification settings, in-app controls) only cover part of it.
• With a mixer: keep your one app, mute or zero out everything else.
• Boost the app you kept if it's too quiet on its own.

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.