You're on a Zoom call. Slack keeps making notification sounds. A YouTube tab you forgot about starts auto-playing. You hit the mute key — and now you can't hear your call either. macOS mutes everything. There's no built-in way to mute just one app.
On Windows, you'd right-click the speaker icon, open the volume mixer, and click the mute button next to Slack. Done. Slack is silent, everything else keeps playing. macOS has no equivalent.
This guide covers every method available to mute a specific app on your Mac — from built-in workarounds to the one solution that actually works like a proper mute button.
Why macOS can't mute individual apps
macOS treats audio as a single stream. Every app's audio gets mixed together before it reaches your speakers, and the only volume control Apple gives you operates on that final mixed output. There's no way to reach into that mix and silence one app without affecting the rest.
This isn't a hardware limitation — it's a software design choice. macOS's Core Audio framework supports per-process audio control at the API level. Apple simply hasn't built a user-facing way to access it.
Built-in workarounds (and their limits)
1. Turn off notifications for the app
Go to System Settings → Notifications and find the app you want to silence. You can disable sounds for its notifications, or turn off notifications entirely.
The catch: This only works for notification sounds. If the app makes other sounds — media playback, call audio, in-app sounds — this won't touch them. And you lose visual notifications too, not just sound.
2. Use Focus mode
macOS Focus modes (Do Not Disturb, Work, Personal, etc.) can suppress notification sounds from specific apps. You can configure which apps are allowed to notify you in each Focus mode.
The catch: Focus modes are about notifications, not audio. They won't mute a Slack huddle, a browser tab playing audio, or any media playback. They also require upfront configuration for each mode — you can't just "mute this app right now."
3. Close the app
The nuclear option. If you quit Slack entirely, it can't make sounds. Obviously this means you also can't see any messages until you reopen it.
The catch: You don't want to quit the app — you want to keep using it without hearing it. There's a huge difference between "mute" and "close."
4. Use the app's own settings
Some apps have a "mute sounds" or "mute notifications" setting buried somewhere in their preferences. Slack has it under Preferences → Notifications → Sound & appearance. Spotify has a speaker icon in the player.
The catch: You have to find and navigate each app's settings individually. Many apps don't have this option at all. And switching between "muted" and "unmuted" means diving back into preferences every time, instead of clicking one button.
The real solution: a per-app mute button
What you actually want is dead simple: a mute button next to each app that silences it instantly, without affecting anything else. Click to mute, click again to unmute. The app keeps running, you keep seeing its content — you just don't hear it.
This is exactly what a per-app volume mixer does. SoundDial sits in your menu bar and shows every running app with its own volume slider and mute button.
To mute one app:
- Click the SoundDial icon in your menu bar
- Find the app you want to mute
- Click the speaker icon next to it
That's it. The app is muted. Everything else keeps playing at whatever volume it was. Click the speaker icon again to unmute — the volume returns to exactly where it was before.
Beyond muting: per-app volume control
Once you have a per-app mixer, you realize that muting is just the extreme end of what you actually want. Most of the time, you don't want to fully silence an app — you want to make it quieter.
- Slack notifications at 15% — subtle enough to not interrupt, present enough to notice
- Music at 30% — background level that doesn't compete with conversation
- Browser at 60% — comfortable for video playback
- Zoom at 100% — full volume for the call that matters
SoundDial gives each app a slider from 0% to 200%. You can make apps quieter than their built-in minimum or louder than their built-in maximum. And with volume profiles, you can save your preferred configuration and switch between presets — "Meeting" mode, "Focus" mode, "Music" mode — with a single click.
The auto-ducking feature goes even further: when you start a call, SoundDial automatically lowers everything except your communication app. When the call ends, everything comes back up. You never touch a slider.
Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store — €14.99 one-time purchase, no subscription, macOS 14.2+.