You're working. Spotify is playing background music. It's a little too loud — competing with the podcast in another tab or making it hard to focus. You tap the volume-down key. Spotify gets quieter. But so does everything else — your Zoom call, your notification sounds, your browser audio. All quieter. That's not what you wanted.
This happens because macOS has one volume slider. Press the volume key and it adjusts the system volume, which scales every app equally. There's no way to say "just lower Spotify" with the built-in controls.
The workaround: Spotify's in-app volume
Spotify has its own volume slider in the bottom-right corner of the app (or bottom of the player). You can lower this independently of the system volume. If your system is at 80% and Spotify's slider is at 30%, Spotify will play at effectively 24% while everything else stays at 80%.
The problem: You have to switch to the Spotify window, find the slider, adjust it, then switch back to what you were doing. And Spotify's slider is tiny, imprecise, and doesn't show a percentage — just a visual bar. If you're in a meeting and need to quickly lower your music, fumbling with a small slider in another app is not ideal.
The real fix: per-app volume control
SoundDial puts a volume slider for every app in your menu bar. To lower Spotify without affecting anything else:
- Click the SoundDial icon in the menu bar
- Find Spotify in the list
- Drag its slider down
Done. Spotify is quieter. Zoom is unchanged. Notifications are unchanged. Everything else is unchanged. You didn't leave your current app — the menu bar popover opens right where you are.
Even better: save it as a profile
If you regularly want Spotify at a lower background level while working, save your preferred volume setup as a profile. Create a "Work" profile with Spotify at 25%, Zoom at 100%, and Slack at 15%. Next time you sit down to work, apply the profile with one click instead of adjusting each app individually.
Even better: auto-ducking during calls
SoundDial can automatically lower Spotify when you join a call. Enable auto-ducking in the settings, choose how much to reduce background audio (default 30%), and SoundDial handles the rest. Your music ducks when the call starts and comes back when it ends. No manual adjustment at all.
This is the workflow macOS should support natively: "Spotify at this level, everything else at that level." Since Apple hasn't built it, SoundDial fills the gap.
One-time purchase on the Mac App Store. No subscription. macOS 14.2+.