Your Mac volume is at 100%. The specific app you're trying to hear — a quiet Zoom caller, a soft podcast, a browser video — is still too faint. You crank the system slider to maximum and it's not enough. Meanwhile every other app on your Mac is now painfully loud. The problem isn't your speakers or your hearing. It's that the app outputs audio at a low internal level, and macOS has no way to amplify one app above its own ceiling.
Why max volume still isn't loud enough
The system volume slider scales everything proportionally. If an app outputs audio at, say, 40% of full scale internally, then even at 100% system volume you're only hearing 40% of what your speakers can actually produce. This is common with:
- Video conferencing apps where the remote participant has a quiet microphone
- Podcasts and audiobooks mastered at conservative levels
- Older web videos with low production quality
- Screen recordings and tutorials where the presenter speaks softly
The master slider can't push an app above its own output level. It's a ceiling, not a booster.
Boosting past 100% per app
SoundDial adds per-app volume sliders that go above 100%. The boost amplifies a single app's audio stream beyond its normal maximum without raising the system volume or affecting any other app.
How to use it
- Open SoundDial from the menu bar — every running app appears with its own slider
- Find the quiet app and drag its slider past the 100% mark
- The boost amplifies only that app's audio — everything else stays at its current level
- Lower your system volume back to a comfortable level if you had it cranked
A note on quality
Boost is real amplification, not magic. A moderate boost — pushing a quiet podcast from inaudible to comfortable — works cleanly. Extreme boost on very quiet, noisy source audio can make hiss or artifacts more noticeable. In practice, the sweet spot for most "too quiet" situations is 120-150%, which sounds natural and resolves the problem without introducing distortion.
The key advantage over cranking system volume: only the quiet app gets louder. Your music, system sounds, and other apps stay exactly where they were. No more blasting everything just to hear one thing.
Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store — €14.99 one-time purchase, no subscription, macOS 14.2+.