Make Your Mac Louder for Hard-of-Hearing Listening

If your Mac still isn't loud enough at maximum volume, there are two separate problems to solve: making sound easier to follow, and making one quiet app actually louder. macOS helps with the first. For the second, you need a per-app boost. This guide is about everyday listening comfort, not medical advice; if your hearing has changed, a hearing professional is the right person to talk to.

Why maxing the volume slider isn't enough

The macOS volume slider has two limits. First, it can't make an app louder than that app's own output. If a podcast, video or call is quiet to begin with, 'full volume' is still soft. Second, macOS has no built-in per-app volume mixer. Every app shares one level, so when you turn everything up to hear a soft voice, music and notification sounds get uncomfortably loud too.

What usually helps is making one app louder than the rest and cutting competing sounds so speech stands out.

First, use the built-in macOS settings

These cost nothing and are worth setting up first. They help with clarity more than raw loudness:

• Mono audio: in System Settings > Accessibility > Audio, look for the option to play stereo audio as mono. If one ear hears better than the other, this sends the full signal to both sides, so you don't miss half the dialogue.
• Left/right slider: in System Settings > Sound, the output settings have a slider between left and right. Moving it toward your stronger ear can help.
• Headphone Accommodations: if your Mac shows a Headphone Accommodations option under Accessibility > Audio (it appears for supported Apple and Beats headphones), it can adjust headphone audio to make soft sounds and speech easier to hear.
• Captions: many video and call apps can show live captions or subtitles, which take pressure off your ears entirely.
• Lower background sounds in the app: some video and game apps let you turn music or effects down separately from dialogue.

None of these makes a single quiet app louder than 100%, and that's often the real problem.

Boost one app with SoundDial

SoundDial lives in your menu bar and shows a slider for each running app. Each slider goes from 0% to 200%. A workflow that helps:

1. Boost the app you're listening to. Drag its slider above 100% (up to 200%) to make a quiet video call, podcast or movie louder than the app allows on its own.
2. Lower or mute everything else. Pull down music, browser audio or notification sounds, or mute them with one click, so nothing competes with the voice you're trying to follow.
3. Leave the system volume where it's comfortable. Only the boosted app gets louder, so alert sounds and other apps don't suddenly blast.

SoundDial remembers the level you set for each app (Settings > General > Default volume for new apps: Remember last). Mute is not remembered, and an app you open later may need a touch of its slider before the saved level applies. When you switch from a call to a movie, adjust the sliders for the new app, or save each setup as a profile and click it to apply it to the apps that are running. For more on boosting, see boosting Mac volume beyond 100% and Mac volume too quiet at max.

Go easy on the boost

Any software boost raises whatever is in the signal, so pushing already-loud audio very high can make it sound harsh or distorted, and SoundDial has no limiter to catch that. Start modestly, raise the level until speech is clear, and back off if it starts to sound rough. Protecting the hearing you have matters, so aim for clarity rather than maximum loudness, and give your ears breaks during long listening sessions.

The bottom line

Set up the built-in accessibility options first, they're worth having. If the remaining problem is that one app is simply too quiet, a per-app boost lets you raise just that app and keep everything else calm. That's what a volume booster for Mac is for, and macOS doesn't do it on its own.

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. It does not record anything.

Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store.