Honestly, no — macOS does not let you set a different left/right stereo balance per application, and almost no third-party tool exposes true per-app panning either. You can set one global balance for your output device, and you can control per-app volume, but independent per-app pan is not a feature macOS makes available.
Balance vs. volume — they're not the same thing
It's worth separating two ideas that often get confused:
- Volume — how loud an app is overall. This is a single level applied to both channels.
- Balance (pan) — how audio is distributed between the left and right speakers. A balance of "full left" sends everything to the left channel and silences the right.
People asking for "different balance per app" usually want one of two things: to push one app's sound to one ear (say, a call in your left ear, music in your right), or to correct for a hearing difference or a bad speaker on one side — but only for certain apps. Those are legitimate goals. The problem is where the control lives.
Why macOS can't do this natively
macOS has exactly one balance control, and it lives at the output-device level. You'll find it under System Settings → Sound → Output, where a Balance slider shifts the entire mix left or right. Whatever that slider is set to applies to everything routed to that device — every app, every system sound, all at once.
There is no API in the standard macOS audio stack that says "render this app's audio to the left, that app's to the right." Apps hand their audio to the system already mixed down, and the system applies one master balance on the way to the speakers. So the layer where you'd want per-app pan simply isn't exposed by the operating system. This is a genuine OS limitation, not something a menu-bar utility can politely work around.
Unlike per-app volume — which macOS also lacks natively but which apps can implement by tapping the audio stream — per-app balance would require re-panning each app's stream independently, and that hook isn't available to sandboxed apps.
What SoundDial does — and honestly, what it doesn't
SoundDial gives you the per-app control macOS is missing: independent volume for each running app, per-app mute, a per-app volume boost above 100%, savable volume profiles, auto-ducking, and quick output switching from the menu bar.
To be straight with you: SoundDial controls per-app loudness and muting, not per-app stereo panning. It won't send Safari to your left ear and Spotify to your right. If someone tells you a menu-bar mixer does true per-app L/R balance on macOS, be skeptical — that's not a control the OS hands out. What SoundDial genuinely solves is the far more common frustration: one app being too loud or too quiet relative to another.
The real workarounds for per-app balance
If you truly need audio split by side, here are the honest options, roughly from simplest to most involved:
- Global balance (all apps): Use System Settings → Sound → Output → Balance. This is your only built-in option, and it affects every app. Useful for correcting a room or a hearing asymmetry, useless for isolating one app.
- Separate output devices: This is the closest thing to real per-app balance. Route App A to one output device and App B to another, then set each device's balance independently. macOS lets you pick an output device inside some apps (and browsers/communication apps often expose their own output picker). If App A points to a device panned left and App B to a device panned right, you effectively get per-app balance — as long as both apps let you choose their output.
- Virtual audio routing tools: Utilities that create virtual devices and an internal mixer can, in some configurations, route specific apps to specific channels. This is powerful but fiddly, adds a driver-style component, and is overkill for most people. It's the domain of streamers and audio engineers, not a casual "call in one ear" fix.
- Hardware split: If it's about physical speakers or a hearing difference, a hardware mixer or an audio interface with per-channel control sidesteps the software problem entirely.
When per-app volume is actually what you needed
A lot of "I want different balance per app" requests are really "one app is drowning out another." If the goal is a video call you can hear over your music, or a game that's too loud next to a Discord chat, balance isn't the tool — independent volume is. That's exactly what a per-app mixer handles cleanly, without virtual drivers or routing gymnastics.
So the honest summary: true per-app left/right balance isn't a macOS feature, and no mixer app fakes it convincingly. Your real routes are the global balance slider or per-app output routing to separately-panned devices. But if the underlying pain is relative loudness, that's a solved problem.
Want independent volume, mute, and boost for every app on your Mac, with savable profiles and no drivers? Get SoundDial on the Mac App Store — €14.99, one-time, sandboxed.