Muting an Application on a Mac

Question

Is it possible to mute just a single application (ex. Safari) on Mac while letting other application's sound continue to run through?

score 13 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 27 '11 at 04:40

13

You could use Audio Hijack Pro:

Audio Hijack Pro screenshot

It's an advanced mixer initially meant for recording an application's audio.

You can adjust the volume of each application separately and also mute them. It's also fully AppleScriptable, so I guess you could associate keyboard shortcuts to mute a given set of apps.

edited Oct 27 '11 at 04:40

Gareth

19,080

answered Oct 06 '09 at 11:34

Ivan

336

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '17 at 14:24

3

I tried BackgroundMusic and it works like a charm (and it's free!)

answered Jul 04 '17 at 14:24

rvandoni

131

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 22 '16 at 20:45

If you are looking for something simpler (and cheaper) than Audio Hijack, I just came across an app called SoundBunny. I have not tried it, but it looks like a good alternative for those who just want to control apps' volumes and don't need the recording capabilities of Audio Hijack.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 07 '09 at 17:07

If you have the (mis-?)fortune to be running 10.4 on a PowerPC Mac, then you can still use Rogue Amoeba's old Detour product (now free.)

You can also accomplish this with their Airfoil product, in a roundabout way, by hijacking Safari and then not enabling any Airfoil speakers.

(It's a shame they didn't revamp Detour, once they'd come up with a new way not using APE, to instantly hijack the sound. I too used to divert Safari to shut up annoying embedded MIDI and Flash. But I can recommend ClickToFlash for handling the latter!)

Muting an Application on a Mac

4 Answers4