At 9 AM you need Zoom loud, Slack at a gentle ping level, music quiet, and browser muted. At 6 PM the workday ends — Zoom doesn't matter, Slack should be silent, music goes to 80%, and the browser plays Netflix at full volume. That's five or six apps to adjust manually, twice a day, every day. Most people don't bother and just live with the wrong volumes half the time.
The context-switching tax
Your audio needs are completely different depending on what you're doing, but macOS doesn't have any concept of audio contexts. There's no "work mode" volume setup or "evening" preset. Every time your context changes, you either manually adjust each app or accept that some apps will be too loud and others too quiet.
This isn't a once-a-day problem. Many people switch contexts multiple times: morning focus, standup meeting, deep work, lunch break, afternoon collaboration, evening personal time. Each one has an ideal audio configuration, and none of them are the same.
Volume profiles for every context
SoundDial lets you save complete per-app volume configurations as named profiles and switch between them with a single click from the menu bar.
Work profile
- Zoom / Meet: 100%
- Slack: 20% — subtle notifications
- Music: 25% — background focus
- Browser: muted
- Messages: muted
Home profile
- Music / Spotify: 80%
- Browser (streaming): 100%
- Slack: muted
- Zoom: muted
- Messages: 50%
Focus profile
- Music: 40% — lo-fi or ambient
- Everything else: muted
Three profiles, three completely different audio environments. Each switch takes one click and applies instantly. Your Mac's audio adapts to you instead of the other way around.
Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store — €14.99 one-time purchase, no subscription, macOS 14.2+.