How to Set a Different Left/Right Balance Per App on Mac

Short answer: macOS has one left/right balance, and it applies to everything you hear. To give each app its own, open SoundDial, click ⋯ next to the app, choose Equalizer & Balance… and move the balance slider.

macOS gives you exactly one left/right balance control, and it applies to every app at once. There's no built-in way to put a call more to the left and music more to the right, or to shift only one app. SoundDial 2.0 adds a balance slider per app.

Balance and volume are different things

• Volume is how loud an app is overall, one level for both channels.
• Balance is how the sound is split between left and right. Full left keeps the left channel and silences the right.

People who want a different balance per app usually want one of two things: to put one app toward one ear (a call on the left, music on the right), or to compensate for a weaker speaker or a hearing difference, but only for some apps. Both are reasonable. The question is where the control lives.

What macOS offers

macOS has a left/right control for the whole output:

• System Settings > Accessibility > Audio has a Balance slider.
• System Settings > Sound > Output shows a Balance slider for the selected output device too.

Whatever you set there applies to everything that plays on that device: every app and every system sound.

That's still the right tool when:

• Everything should shift. A speaker placement or a hearing difference that affects all your listening is best fixed once, for the whole Mac.
• You hear on one side only. In System Settings > Accessibility > Audio you can turn on Mono Audio, which mixes stereo into one channel and sends it to both sides, so you don't miss anything that was mixed to the other side.

What neither setting can do is treat apps differently.

Per-app balance with SoundDial

SoundDial handles each app's audio separately, so it can set a balance per app:

1. Click SoundDial in the menu bar, or press Control-Option-S.
2. Click the ⋯ button on the app's row and choose Equalizer & Balance…
3. Move the balance slider left or right. It goes from -100 (left) to 100 (right) and snaps back to the centre when you get close. Changes apply instantly.

The app's row then shows an L or R chip, so you can see which apps are shifted. Reset EQ & Balance in the same panel puts the app back in the middle (and resets its equalizer).

How it works

SoundDial's balance works by lowering one side. Moving Spotify to the right turns its left channel down; it never boosts the right channel. So an app set fully to one side plays only on that side, and a small shift makes it lean without getting louder.

Setups that work well

• Call in one ear, music in the other. In headphones, set the call app to the left and Spotify to the right. Both keep playing, each on its own side.
• Music slightly off-center. Move Spotify a little to the right and leave the call in the middle, so voices stay centered and clear.
• A correction for one app only. If you want a shift for music but not for calls, set it on the music app instead of the system slider.

Balance sits in the same panel as SoundDial's per-app equalizer (10 bands, 11 presets), so you can shape an app's sound and its position in one place. More on that in per-app equalizer on Mac.

Keep it, save it, or set it from a link

• Keep it. With Settings > General > When an app opens set to Remember last, SoundDial brings back each app's balance, along with its volume, mute, EQ and output device, when the app opens.
• Save it. Save current mix as a profile stores every app's volume, mute, EQ and balance, so a "call left, music right" setup is one click away.
• Set it from a link. There's a balance URL command (sounddial://balance?app=Spotify&value=…) that works from any launcher or script that can open a URL, or with open in Terminal.

Limits

• Per app, not per browser tab. All tabs of one browser share that browser's balance.
• Stereo only. It's a left/right balance, not surround positioning.
• Lowering, not boosting. The other side is turned down; the chosen side is not turned up.

If you only need everything shifted the same way, the system Balance slider is all you need. If you want each app in its own place, that's where per-app balance helps.

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.