The best value per-app volume mixer for Mac in 2026 is SoundDial, a menu-bar app on the Mac App Store for a one-time €14.99. It gives every app its own volume slider, plus mute, boost, profiles and auto-ducking — no drivers, no subscription, and no risky downloads. It's the cheapest paid option that actually works reliably.
Why "cheapest" needs a definition
There are free volume tools for Mac, so if the only goal is spending zero, you have options. But free usually costs you somewhere else: fragility on new macOS versions, missing features like boost or profiles, or an install process that involves an audio-capture driver you have to trust. "Cheapest good" means the lowest price that still gets you a stable, full-featured mixer you'll keep using. That's the lens we'll use here.
First, the thing macOS doesn't do
Windows has had a per-app volume mixer for years — right-click the speaker icon and set each app independently. macOS still has nothing equivalent built in. You get one master volume and whatever internal slider an app happens to ship (Music, some browsers). There's no system-wide way to make Slack quieter than Spotify, or to boost a quiet video call above everything else. Every option below exists to fill that gap.
The contenders, priced honestly
SoundDial — €14.99, one-time
SoundDial lives in your menu bar and gives each running app an independent volume slider. Beyond the basics, it adds the features people actually reach for:
- Per-app boost — push a too-quiet app above 100% instead of straining to hear it.
- Per-app mute — silence one app without touching the rest.
- Volume profiles — save a "work call" or "movie night" mix and recall it instantly.
- Auto-ducking — automatically drop background audio when something more important plays.
- Quick output switching — jump between speakers, headphones and other devices from the same menu.
Because it's on the Mac App Store, it's sandboxed, Apple-reviewed and installs cleanly — no DMG, no kernel extension, no audio driver to approve. You pay €14.99 once and own it. For most people, this is the sweet spot: cheap enough to be an easy yes, complete enough that you won't outgrow it.
SoundSource — ~$39, the pro option
Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource is the gold standard for power users. It does per-app volume and mute like SoundDial, but goes further with per-app equalizers and full output routing (send one app to headphones, another to speakers). It's genuinely excellent — but it's roughly $39, and it installs outside the App Store with an audio-capture component you have to grant permission to. If you need per-app EQ or complex routing, it's worth the money. If you just want a clean, cheap mixer, you're paying for capabilities you may never touch.
Background Music — free, open-source
Background Music is a well-known free, open-source app that offers per-app volume and auto-pause. The catch: it hooks deep into Core Audio via a virtual driver, and it has a long history of breaking on new macOS releases, sometimes needing manual fixes or a reinstall after updates. It also lacks boost, saved profiles and auto-ducking. Great for tinkerers who don't mind maintenance; frustrating if you just want it to work.
FineTune — free, menu-bar
FineTune is a free, open-source menu-bar volume app. It's lightweight and pleasant, and for simple per-app adjustment it can be enough. But being a small free project, it doesn't match the feature depth — no profiles, no auto-ducking, and boost/output handling are limited. Zero cost, fewer guarantees on longevity and support.
eqMac — free, EQ + booster
eqMac is a free system-wide equalizer with a volume booster. It's more about shaping tone and loudness across your whole Mac than mixing individual apps, so it's a different tool for a different job. If you specifically want per-app control, eqMac isn't really the answer, though it's a fine free EQ.
Price vs. value: the honest table
- Truly free, but with tradeoffs: Background Music (fragile, driver-based), FineTune (thin features), eqMac (EQ, not a mixer).
- Cheapest complete paid app: SoundDial at €14.99 — boost, profiles, ducking, App Store safety.
- Premium/pro: SoundSource at ~$39 — EQ and routing, non-App-Store install.
Put another way: SoundDial costs roughly a third of SoundSource while covering the features 90% of people actually want. And unlike the free options, it won't quietly break after a macOS update, because it doesn't rely on a fragile system-level audio driver.
Which should you pick?
If you're a pro who needs per-app EQ and to route apps to different outputs, buy SoundSource — it earns its price. If you love open-source and don't mind occasional breakage, try Background Music or FineTune for free. But if you want the cheapest option that just works — independent volume, boost, mute, saveable profiles and auto-ducking, installed safely from the App Store — SoundDial is the clear value winner in 2026.
The best mixer isn't the one with the most features or the lowest price — it's the one you set up once and forget about. At €14.99, SoundDial makes that an easy call.
Ready to give every app its own volume? Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store for a one-time €14.99 — no subscription, no drivers, no risk.