Sound Control lets you set per-app volume controls on your Mac

In this week’s episode of “Let’s Talk iOS,” Sebastien and Cody shared frustration over the lack of granular audio control on iOS and macOS. While iOS remains a point of frustration, a simple Mac utility called Sound Control gives users exactly what the name implies.

Sound Control enables application-specific volume sliders on the Mac. In addition to  Menu Bar controls, Sound Control can also be configured with user-defined keyboard shortcuts to adjust the level of a foreground app, or mute any background app.

Using Sound Control is dead simple. Once you’ve loaded up an application that outputs sound, it will appear in the list of controllable applications in the app’s dropdown list. From there, simply move the sliders up and down and create your own custom volume levels for each application.

With Sound Control, you can avoid the discomfort of quiet FaceTime calls being interrupted by loud notifications, accidentally triggered music, or autoplaying web ads. It’s a great way to take control of your system’s audio output.

Best of all, with Sound Control, you can mute any background applications, so only the front-most application makes noise. This adds another layer of convenience when working with audio content, giving a presentations, or call (FaceTime, Skype, Hangouts, etc.).

Another unique feature of Sound Control is the ability to adjust the equalizer for each application. While this may not be useful to everyone, it can be helpful in adjusting levels where EQ adjustments aren’t traditionally available – like in Safari. This means YouTube videos and or SoundCloud songs can get the EQ treatment best suited for your speakers or headphones.

The final feature of Sound Control worth mentioning is audio routing. This works similarly to once popular SoundFlower utility, and can be useful when more than one output device is connected to your Mac. This is a bit of a power user feature, but a nice addition nonetheless.

Sound Control is a very robust application, and offers a feature set on par with utilities more than 5x the price. If you’re looking for a way to take control of individual application’s volume levels, download Sound Control for $10 on the developer’s website.

As a special offer for iDownloadBlog readers, Staticz, the makers of Sound Control, is offering a 25% discount on Sound Control for Mac when you use the code SC_IDLBLOG at checkout.