Control Individual Browser Tab Volume on Mac?

You have a YouTube tutorial playing in one tab, a quiet screen recording in another, and a third tab just started an ad. You want to lower the first, raise the second and mute the third, independently.

The short, honest answer: macOS has no per-tab volume control, and browsers don't give you a volume slider per tab either. What you can do is mute individual tabs in the browser and control the whole browser's volume relative to your other apps. That covers most of the pain.

Why per-tab volume is hard

To macOS, Chrome is one app, Safari is one app and Firefox is one app. The browser mixes the audio of all its tabs before it reaches the system, so system-level volume controls see the browser, not the tab.

What the browser gives you: tab mute

Most browsers let you mute a single tab, but it's on or off. There's no slider.

• Safari: tabs playing audio show a speaker icon; click it to mute that tab.
• Chrome: right-click the tab and choose Mute site. This mutes that site until you unmute it.
• Firefox: right-click the tab and choose the mute option, or click the speaker icon on the tab.

You can silence the noisy tab, but you can't put one tab at 20% and another at 80%. Some videos have their own volume control in the player (YouTube, for example), which you can use as a rough per-tab level.

To stop tabs from starting audio in the first place, see stopping browser tabs from auto-playing audio.

What you can control: the browser as a whole

A per-app volume mixer controls each app, and each browser is a separate app. SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac, puts a slider and mute button for each running app in your menu bar.

To be plain about it: SoundDial works per app, not per browser tab. All tabs of one browser share one slider. Here's how that still helps.

Browser versus everything else

The most common need is simply having browser audio at a different level from your other apps:

• Music too loud over a YouTube tutorial? Lower Spotify to 30% and keep the browser at 100%.
• A browser tab playing reference audio during a Zoom call? Mute the browser for the call and unmute it after, while Zoom keeps playing.
• A video in the browser too quiet even at full volume? Boost the browser above 100% (up to 200%) without making other apps louder.

Using two browsers as 'tab groups'

If you already use more than one browser, each one gets its own slider:

• Chrome at 100% for your main video
• Safari at 40% for background material
• Firefox muted for work that needs no sound

Put the content you want at different levels into different browsers, and you get something close to per-tab control.

The combination that works

For one browser: mute the noisy tab inside the browser, then use the per-app slider to set the browser's overall level relative to your other apps. More on this: per-app volume control on Mac.

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

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.