How to Mute an App on Mac, or Mute All at Once

Someone walks into the room. Your boss calls. A client shares their screen and your music starts playing. You need silence, right now. Or you only want one app to shut up while everything else keeps playing.

Here's how to do both on a Mac.

Mute all apps at once

The mute key

The Mac's mute key (the speaker-with-slash key, F10 on most Mac keyboards) mutes the system audio output. Every app goes silent at once. Press it again and the sound comes back at the same system volume. If your top row acts as function keys, hold Fn and press it.

Muting this way doesn't change the volume inside any app: if Spotify's own slider was at 30%, it's still at 30% when you unmute.

Control Center or the menu bar

Click Control Center (or the Sound icon in the menu bar) and drag the volume slider all the way down. Same effect as the mute key.

Silence notification sounds only

If it's the alerts you want gone, not your music or call, turn on Do Not Disturb or a Focus in Control Center. Notification sounds stop; media and calls keep playing.

Mute just one app

The mute key is all or nothing. macOS has no built-in way to mute a single app, but there are a few native options:

• Use the app's own controls: Music, Spotify, video players and most call apps have their own volume slider or mute button.
• Mute a browser tab: In Safari, click the speaker icon in the address bar or tab. In Chrome, right-click the tab and choose to mute the site.
• Turn off an app's notification sounds: System Settings > Notifications, choose the app and turn off "Play sound for notification".

These work, but they're spread across every app, and many apps have no volume control at all.

Mute any app from the menu bar

SoundDial puts a mute button and a volume slider next to every running app, in one menu-bar panel. Click to mute one app on your Mac while the others keep playing, or click the mute button on each app you want quiet. You can also lower one app without touching the rest, or boost a quiet one above 100%, up to 200%.

It works per app, not per browser tab: all tabs of one browser share one slider. For a step-by-step version, see how to mute one app on Mac.

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