You have a YouTube tutorial playing in one tab, a quiet Loom video in another, and a third tab just started auto-playing an ad. You want to lower the YouTube tab, boost the Loom tab, and mute the ad — independently. Can you control volume per browser tab on macOS? The short honest answer: not natively, and not with most tools. But you can control the entire browser's volume, and that solves most of the pain.
Why per-tab volume doesn't exist
Browsers mix all their tab audio into a single output stream before handing it to the operating system. To macOS, Chrome is one app producing one audio stream. Safari is one app. Firefox is one app. The OS has no visibility into which tab is generating which sound — that information lives inside the browser's internal audio engine and isn't exposed to external tools.
Some browsers let you mute individual tabs (click the speaker icon on the tab), but that's a binary on/off — there's no volume slider per tab. You can mute the noisy tab, but you can't lower it to 20% while keeping another at 80%.
What you can actually control
SoundDial controls volume at the app level. Since each browser is a separate app, you get independent control over:
Multi-browser workflows
- Chrome: 100% — your main video or tutorial
- Safari: 40% — background reference material
- Firefox: muted — testing or dev tools, no audio needed
If you use multiple browsers (many developers and researchers do), each browser gets its own slider. That's genuine per-"tab-group" control, since you can assign different content to different browsers and mix them independently.
Browser versus everything else
The more common scenario is just wanting browser audio at a different level than your other apps. Music too loud over a YouTube tutorial? Lower Spotify to 30% while keeping Chrome at 100%. Zoom call while a browser tab plays reference material? Mute the browser entirely during the call with per-app mute, then unmute it after.
The tab-mute workaround
For true per-tab control within a single browser, the built-in tab mute is your only option. Combine it with SoundDial's per-browser volume: mute the noisy tab inside the browser, then use SoundDial to set the overall browser volume where you want it relative to your other apps.
Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store — €14.99 one-time purchase, no subscription, macOS 14.2+.