Safari Volume on Mac: Tab Mute and a Safari-Only Slider

Short answer: Safari has no volume slider of its own and no per-tab volume. Natively you can mute a tab with its speaker icon. To lower Safari as a whole without touching other apps, SoundDial gives Safari its own slider, per app, not per tab.

A YouTube video in Safari is much louder than your music. Or a podcast in Safari is too quiet next to a Zoom call. You reach for the volume keys and everything changes at once, because a Mac has one volume for the whole system. So what can you actually do about Safari's volume, and what about single tabs?

What Safari and macOS offer

macOS has a single system volume. There's no built-in mixer that sets Safari to one level and Spotify to another.

Safari itself has a few useful tools:

• Tab mute. Tabs playing audio show a speaker icon; click it to mute that tab. It's on or off, with no level in between.
• Auto-play settings. In Safari > Settings > Websites > Auto-Play, you can stop sites from starting video with sound on their own, so a noisy tab doesn't surprise you in the first place.
• The site's own player. Many video and audio players on websites have their own volume slider. It works only on that one site, but it's the closest thing to a level for a single tab.

To macOS, Safari is one app. The browser mixes the audio of all its tabs before it reaches the system, so system-level volume controls see Safari, not the tab. That's why the tools for single tabs live inside Safari and on the websites themselves.

So natively you can silence a tab or turn down one site's player, but you can't say "Safari at 40%, everything else at full volume".

Give Safari its own volume slider

SoundDial is a menu-bar app that gives each app that plays sound its own volume slider from 0% to 200%, and Safari is one of them.

1. Install SoundDial and complete the guided setup, which checks that audio access works (see the setup guide).
2. Play something in Safari.
3. Click the SoundDial icon in the menu bar, or press Control-Option-S.
4. Drag Safari's slider to the level you want, for example 40%. Other apps stay where they are.

If Settings > General > When an app opens is set to Remember last, Safari gets its volume back the next time it opens. Choose Always 100% if you'd rather start fresh each time.

Safari's helper processes are handled for you

Websites in Safari play audio through WebKit helper processes, not through one single Safari process. SoundDial groups those helpers under Safari, so one Safari row and one slider control all of Safari's audio.

The honest part: per app, not per tab

SoundDial controls Safari as a whole app. All Safari tabs share Safari's slider; SoundDial can't set one tab to 30% and another to 80%.

What works well in practice is combining both:

• Use Safari's speaker icon to mute the tab you don't want to hear.
• Use SoundDial to set Safari's overall level relative to your other apps.
• If you regularly need two web sources at different levels, play one in Safari and the other in a second browser such as Chrome or Firefox. Each browser gets its own slider in SoundDial.

More on this in controlling browser tab volume on Mac.

Make Safari podcasts clearer with EQ

Volume is only half the story with podcasts, interviews or lectures. SoundDial 2.0 has a 10-band equalizer for each app.

1. In the SoundDial popover, click ⋯ on Safari's row.
2. Choose Equalizer & Balance…
3. Turn on the Equalizer switch.
4. Pick the Vocal or Podcast preset. Changes apply instantly, so you can switch presets while listening.

The EQ only affects Safari, and again it covers all of Safari's tabs. Spotify can stay on Bass Boost and Zoom on Flat at the same time. If you've changed too much, Reset EQ & Balance puts Safari back to neutral.

Examples

Podcast in Safari, music in the background

Set Safari to 100% with the Vocal preset and Spotify to 25%. The voice stays clear, the music stays underneath.

Safari too loud next to your work

YouTube in Safari is drowning everything out. Drag Safari to 40%. Your other apps keep their levels.

Quiet lecture recording

A lecture video in Safari is barely audible even at full volume. Push Safari above 100%, up to 200%. Above 100%, SoundDial runs Safari through a soft limiter that rounds off peaks instead of clipping them hard. See boosting one app above 100%.

Calls from the browser

You join a video call in Safari. With Lower other apps during calls on (it is by default), Safari using audio input counts as a call, so other playing apps drop to 30% of their volume. Safari itself isn't lowered, and everything comes back when the call ends. One thing to know: Safari using the microphone for something else, such as dictation, also triggers this.

Save your Safari setup

Choose Save current mix as a profile to store Safari's volume, mute, EQ and balance along with every other app's, then switch back to it with one click.

Common questions

Can I lower Safari's volume without changing the system volume?

Yes, with SoundDial. Safari gets its own slider from 0% to 200%, and the system volume and other apps stay as they are.

Can SoundDial control individual Safari tabs?

No. SoundDial works per app, not per tab. For single tabs, use Safari's speaker icon or the site's own player, or play the second source in another browser.

Why is there only one Safari row when several tabs are playing?

Safari plays web audio through WebKit helper processes. SoundDial groups them under Safari so one slider controls all of it.

Does the EQ work on YouTube and other sites in Safari?

Yes. The EQ applies to everything Safari plays, whatever the website.

Does SoundDial listen to my microphone when I'm on a call in Safari?

No. It only notices that Safari is using audio input; it does not read or record microphone audio. SoundDial is sandboxed, has no network entitlement and needs no account.

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.