You're a student attending an online lecture on Zoom. You have a YouTube tutorial open in another tab for reference. Your classmates are chatting on Discord. Spotify is playing lo-fi beats in the background. Your Mac treats all of these as one volume. Turn down the lo-fi and you can't hear your professor. Turn up the lecture and the Discord pings shatter your concentration.
macOS has one volume slider for everything. For students juggling multiple audio sources, this is a constant friction point.
The typical student audio stack
- Lecture platform (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, Webex) — needs to be crystal clear, always audible
- Reference material (YouTube tutorials, recorded lectures) — moderate volume, needs to be pausable/adjustable
- Study music (Spotify, Apple Music) — low background level, shouldn't compete with the lecture
- Chat (Discord, iMessage, Slack) — subtle notification sounds, not disruptive
- Browser tabs — occasional auto-playing content that needs to be silenced instantly
The macOS limitation
With one system volume, you're forced to compromise. Set it high enough for a quiet professor's mic, and Spotify is too loud. Set it for comfortable music, and the lecture is inaudible. Mute Spotify and you lose the focus benefit of background music. There's no comfortable balance because every app is locked to the same level.
Setting up per-app audio for studying
SoundDial gives each app its own volume slider, so you can build the ideal study audio setup:
Lecture profile
- Zoom / Teams / Meet: 100% — never miss a word
- Spotify: 15% — barely-there background ambiance
- Discord: 10% — subtle notifications only
- Browser: 40% — for reference videos when needed
- iMessage: muted — check between classes
Self-study profile
- Spotify: 50% — motivating study music
- Browser: 70% — tutorial videos at a clear level
- Discord: 20% — available for study group
- Everything else: muted
Break profile
- Everything: 60-80% — relax between classes
Save each as a volume profile and switch between them with one click as your day progresses. When a lecture starts, apply "Lecture" — auto-ducking will handle the rest, automatically lowering your music when the professor speaks through your mic.
Why this matters for focus
Studies consistently show that having the right audio environment improves concentration and retention. The wrong mix — music too loud, notifications too frequent, lecture too quiet — creates cognitive load that has nothing to do with the material you're studying. Getting audio right once, saving it as a profile, and never thinking about it again removes a constant source of distraction.
Available on the Mac App Store — Apple-reviewed, €14.99 one-time purchase, no subscription, macOS 14.2+.