WhatsApp and Telegram calls have no in-app volume slider on Mac, so the call and your music both ride the one master output — turn either up or down and they move together. The fix is to control the other app instead: drop your music app's own slider, or install a per-app mixer that gives the call and the music separate levels you can set once and ride from the keyboard.
The scenario is familiar. You're on a WhatsApp voice call with music playing quietly underneath, and the other person drops to a mumble. You reach for the volume keys — and now the music is blasting too. Nudge it back down and the caller fades out again. There's no single control that lets you say "call at 100%, music at 25%," because macOS doesn't ship one and neither WhatsApp nor Telegram fills the gap.
Why the call and the music won't separate
On a Mac, every app's sound is summed into one output stream, and the volume keys set the level of that whole stream. There's no native per-app mixer — no equivalent of the Windows Volume Mixer, where every app gets its own slider in one panel. Apple never built it, so by default a call and your background music are welded to the same knob.
Some apps paper over this with their own internal volume. Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and most media players have a slider you can drop without touching system volume. Calling apps mostly don't. WhatsApp Desktop has no call volume control — it uses your system output and leaves the loudness to macOS. Telegram Desktop lets you choose which input and output device a call uses, but it has no slider to set how loud the call is against everything else. So the app that's usually the problem (the too-quiet call) is exactly the one with no knob of its own.
The free workaround: turn down the music, not the call
Because the call has no slider, you balance the pair by moving the other app. Leave system volume up where the call sounds right, then reach into your music app and pull its own level down to 20–30%. WhatsApp and Telegram stay loud because they follow the master; the music sits underneath because you cut it at the source. This is free and it works.
It's also fiddly in practice. You're clicking into the music app's window mid-call, the slider lives in a different place in every app, and you redo it each time the balance drifts. If the "music" is something with no slider of its own — a game, a system sound, a random web player without controls — you're stuck: there's nothing to turn down but the master, which drags the call with it. For a one-off call it's fine. For back-to-back calls over a working day it's the friction this whole category exists to remove.
The real fix: give each app its own level
A per-app volume mixer sits at the macOS audio layer and hands every running app its own fader — the control Apple left out. Now "WhatsApp at 100%, music at 25%" is a setting, not a juggling act, and it holds even for apps that have no slider of their own. A few tools do this:
| Approach | Balances call vs music | Works on apps with no slider | How you reach it | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Music app's own slider | Only lowers the music | No | Click into the app | Free |
| Background Music | Yes | Yes | Menu-bar list | Free, open source |
| SoundSource | Yes | Yes | Menu-bar panel + EQ | $49 one-time |
| Fader | Yes | Yes | Keyboard + menu bar | $19.99 one-time |
Background Music is free and open source and will get the job done from a menu-bar list. SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba is a polished, deep menu-bar app with per-app EQ, at $49 one-time. All three set per-app volume; where they differ is how fast you can reach the control mid-call.
Why speed is the whole point on a call
A caller's level isn't set-and-forget. It shifts when they move, switch rooms, or lean away from the mic, and you want to correct it in the second it happens — without a five-step detour to the menu bar and back. A menu-bar list means move to the corner, click the icon, find the row, drag the slider, dismiss. That's a lot of hunting for a change you make several times a call.
Fader's bet is that the fastest controller you own is the keyboard already under your hands. You hit a toggle hotkey and the keyboard becomes a mixer — the Q/A/Z column is one app, W/S/X the next — so you tap the music down a notch while the caller is still mid-sentence, eyes on the call, hands where they were. You can also bind a per-app mute key, so "kill the music for a second" is one keystroke. Every mixer can set a level; the difference you feel is how long it takes to get there. For a balance you adjust constantly, that's the gap between owning a mixer and actually using it.
A setup that survives back-to-back calls
If your day is calls with focus music underneath, set it up once. Put WhatsApp and Telegram near full, park your music app at a low background level, and give the music a mute hotkey for the moments you need silence. From there you're riding one or two keys, not reorganizing windows between calls. For the wider version of this — meetings, notifications, and music all balanced at once — see how to make a call quieter than your music on Mac, and if the mute key is what you're really after, how to set a keyboard shortcut to mute an app on Mac.
Bottom line
WhatsApp and Telegram give you no call volume slider on Mac, and macOS gives you one master level for everything — so out of the box you can't hold a call loud while keeping music quiet. The free move is to turn the music down at its own slider and leave the call on the master. For a balance you set once and correct without breaking eye contact — especially across a day of calls — a keyboard-driven per-app mixer is the fix, and that's exactly what Fader is built for.
Ride your call and your music from the keyboard
Fader turns letter keys into per-app faders, so a call stays loud while the music drops in one keystroke. $19.99 one-time, 3-day free trial, no account. macOS 14.4+.