menu bar0 to 200% per app
Every app gets its own slider and mute. Boost quiet apps past 100%: a soft limiter keeps them from clipping.
Free and open source for macOS
A volume slider for every app.
Turn Discord down without turning your game down. Per‑app volume from the menu bar or Control Center, with no drivers, no BlackHole and no virtual devices.
macOS 15 or later. Signed and notarized. MIT licensed. All releases
OUTPUTMacBook Pro Speakers ⌄
MICROPHONEMacBook Pro Microphone ⌄
Music40%
Call100%
Game75%
Video140%
Lokasta's FaderQuit
Try it: drag a slider or click a speaker to mute.
01 Why
macOS gives you one slider. You have more than one app.
Turning a call down means turning your music down too. The usual fixes install a virtual audio driver and ask you to rewire your output, and when something goes wrong your sound just stops.
- No drivers or kernel extensions to install.
- No BlackHole and no virtual devices to route through.
- Nothing to undo. If Fader quits, every app's audio goes back to normal instantly.
Wi‑FiHome
BluetoothOn
Display
Sound
Call100%
Game75%
Music40%
Web130%
02 Features
Small, fast, and exactly what the menu bar was missing.
Live level meters
See what is actually playing: a meter for every app, for the output and for the microphone.
Output and mic switcher
Pick your speakers and microphone, with their system volume, right at the top of the panel.
Open it your way
Menu bar icon, a Control Center control (macOS 26), the Dictation key, ⌃⌥V or Spotlight. Crowded menu bar? The keys still work.
Featherweight
Apps at 100% are left alone entirely. Meters only run while the panel is open.
Remembers volumes
Each app's volume is saved and reapplied the next time it plays. Set it once, forget it.
Real app names
Helper processes are folded into the app you actually know.
Private by design
No update checks, no analytics, no crash reporting. Audio is processed in memory and discarded.
Inside Chrome, too. Expand Chrome to give compatible playing audio/video tabs their own volume, mute and reset. No extension needed. Web Audio and unsupported players use Chrome's main slider. Set up tab controls.
03 How it works
Built on Core Audio Process Taps.
Apple added process taps in macOS 14.2. Fader uses them to touch only the apps you change, and installs nothing in the system.
Process tap
A tap captures the app's processes and, with mutedWhenTapped, keeps them from reaching the speakers directly.
Private aggregate device
A private aggregate device, visible only to Fader, pairs that tap with your current output.
Real-time IO proc
An IO proc copies the samples to the output with your gain, ramped per buffer so changes never click.
App
Process tap
Aggregate device
IO proc × gain
Your speakers
Apps at 100% skip all of this. While the panel is open, their meters come from unmuted taps that share a single aggregate device, so 20 playing apps cost one audio thread, not twenty.
04 Privacy
Nothing leaves your Mac.
Fader makes no network requests at all. You can confirm it with Little Snitch, or by searching the source for networking APIs.
network requests, analytics, crash reports
Screen & System Audio RecordingRequired
Lokasta's FaderReads each app's audio to change its volume and show its level. Processed in memory, in real time, then discarded.
MicrophoneOptional
Lokasta's FaderOnly for the mic meter, only while the panel is open, never on Bluetooth mics. Deny it and everything else still works.
Automation: ChromeOptional
Lokasta's FaderOnly after enabling tab controls. Adjusts compatible audio/video players; tab information stays in memory on your Mac. Also requires Chrome's Allow JavaScript from Apple Events setting.
If Fader quits, macOS destroys its taps immediately. Chrome player adjustments restore on a normal quit, with a watchdog after lost contact. Details in SECURITY.md.
05 Install
Up and running in a minute.
Download the .dmg
Grab the latest release. It's signed and notarized by Apple.
Drag to Applications
Open the disk image, drag Fader into Applications, then launch it.
Allow System Audio Recording
macOS asks once. That's how Fader reads each app's audio. Nothing is recorded.
Add to Control Center
On macOS 26: Control Center, Edit Controls, search "Fader", drag it in (or to the menu bar).
Download for Mac
Requires macOS 15 or later. Control Center control needs macOS 26.
Build from source
With Xcode 26 or later:
brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/Lokasta/fader && cd fader
./scripts/install.shSource builds are ad-hoc signed, so macOS asks for permissions again after each rebuild. To sign with your own certificate, see Config/Signing.xcconfig.
06 Built for AI agents
Or just ask your coding agent.
The repo ships an AGENTS.md written for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and friends, with the architecture, the rules that keep audio safe, and how to verify changes without ears. Yes, humans should read it too.
$ gh repo clone Lokasta/fader && cd fader
$ claude
> build and install Fader
Read AGENTS.md
xcodegen generate, 25 tests passed
Installed /Applications/Fader.app
> add a shortcut to mute Spotify
Turn it down. Just that app.
Free, open source, and about a megabyte.