Why Some Apps Are Louder Than Others on Mac

Apps sound very different on your Mac because each one is produced, mastered and normalized to its own loudness, and macOS has no built-in per-app volume control to even them out. Spotify, YouTube, Zoom and system alerts all go through the same master slider, so you end up riding it up and down whenever you switch apps.

It's not your Mac, it's the audio itself

The system volume slider controls the final output level for everything. It doesn't touch the relative loudness built into each app's audio. That loudness is set long before the sound reaches your speakers, and it varies a lot from source to source.

Three things drive the differences:

• Mastering. A punchy pop track is mastered much louder than a quiet acoustic recording or a spoken-word podcast. A film mixed for the cinema keeps whispers quiet and explosions loud on purpose. That wide dynamic range means its average level is low.
• Loudness normalization. Streaming services adjust playback towards a loudness target, measured in LUFS (loudness units relative to full scale). Different services and apps use different targets, and call apps and games apply their own gain. Two apps normalized to different targets won't match.
• No cross-app leveling. Each app only levels its own content. Nothing coordinates Spotify against Zoom against a browser game. macOS adds them together and sends the mix out.

Peak level versus loudness, in plain terms

Peak level is the single loudest instant in a signal. LUFS describes how loud something feels over time, weighted for how human hearing works. That's why a podcast and a dance track can hit the same peak and still feel very different: the track spends far more time near its ceiling.

A quieter target leaves more dynamic range; a louder one gives a consistent, always-full sound. Neither is wrong, but when apps aim for different targets you hear one app shouting and another mumbling. It isn't a bug you can patch.

What you can do with built-in settings

Use each app's own volume and normalization

Many media apps have their own volume slider, and some have a normalization option. In Spotify, look for a volume normalization setting under playback in Settings. In Apple Music, look for Sound Check in the playback settings. These even out tracks inside that app, but they don't help between apps.

Adjust the app's own call volume

Call apps like Zoom and Teams usually have a speaker volume slider in their audio settings. If a call is quiet next to your music, raise it there first.

Ride the master slider

The fallback is adjusting the system volume every time you switch context. It works, but it's tiring, and it changes every app at once.

Many apps (most games, system sounds, plenty of utilities) have no usable volume control of their own, so these options only go so far. Windows has a per-app volume mixer; macOS has never included one.

The practical fix: a slider per app

You can't make every service re-master its catalog, but you can add the layer macOS leaves out: an independent volume for each app. SoundDial, a per-app volume mixer for Mac, lives in your menu bar and gives each running app its own slider from 0% to 200%, plus a mute button.

To even out your apps:

1. Click SoundDial in the menu bar. Each app you have open appears with its own slider.
2. Turn down whatever is blasting, usually a music or video app mastered loud.
3. Leave your quiet reference app (often a call app or a podcast) at 100%.
4. If it's still too soft, boost that one app above 100% without making the rest louder.

The boost matters because plenty of apps are simply too quiet even at maximum, and a slider that only cuts volume can't help them. More on that: boosting a quiet app on Mac.

Where this helps most

The most common case is the jump between music and meetings: streaming music mastered loud, then a call app that sounds faint by comparison. Pull the music down, raise or boost the call app, and the startling volume swing is gone. The same goes for a quiet browser game next to a loud video player. For alerts that jump out over everything, see setting alert volume separately from media.

To be clear about the limits: a per-app slider changes how loud each app is. It won't re-master a badly produced track. SoundDial works per app, not per browser tab, so all tabs of a browser share one slider.

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.