How to keep Mail and notification sounds quiet during calls on Mac

On a Mac, the reliable way to keep Mail chimes and notification sounds out of a call is a Focus mode: turn on Do Not Disturb — or let macOS do it automatically while you share your screen — and the system silences notification banners and their sounds for the whole call. Focus is all-or-nothing, though. To keep the apps that make continuous noise — music, a video tab, a Slack huddle — down during a call without killing everything, put each on its own fader and drop them with one keystroke the moment the call starts.

The problem shows up at the worst possible time. You join a call, and thirty seconds in your Mac decides to announce a new email, a calendar alert, and a message all at once — chimes stacking over whoever's talking, sometimes loud enough that the other side hears them through your mic. macOS makes every app share one master output, so the obvious move — reach for the volume keys — drags the call down with the chimes. You need to quiet the noise without quieting the conversation. Here's how, from the free built-in tools to the keyboard-fast version.

Why your Mac gets noisy the moment a call starts

Two different kinds of sound gang up on you during a meeting. The first is notification sounds: Mail's new-message chime, a Messages ding, a calendar alert, a reminder. These are short, one-shot sounds the system plays when an app posts a notification. The second is app audio that's already running: Spotify still playing, a YouTube tab you forgot to pause, a Slack huddle you left open. macOS has no single "quiet during calls" switch that covers both, so the fix is really two fixes — one for the chimes, one for the streams.

The reliable free fix: a Focus mode for the call

For the chimes, macOS already ships the right tool: Focus. Open Control Center, click Focus, and choose Do Not Disturb. For as long as it's on, notification banners are held back and their sounds don't play — Mail, Messages, calendar alerts, the lot. When the call ends, switch it off and everything you missed is waiting in Notification Center. Nothing is lost; it was just held.

You can make it automatic, too. In System Settings → Notifications, turn off "Allow notifications when mirroring or sharing the display." Now any time you screen-share on a call, macOS goes quiet on its own — no toggle to remember. And if you'd rather it fire for every meeting, build a custom Focus and give it a schedule or trigger under System Settings → Focus.

The limit of Focus is right there in the name: it's a mode, not a mixer. It silences all notification sounds, not the two that are actually too loud, and it does nothing to the music or video that's still playing. It's the correct free tool for the chimes, and only the chimes.

Silence one app's sound for good

If a particular app is the repeat offender — usually Mail — you don't have to reach for it every call. You can turn its sound off once. In Mail, open Settings → General and set "New messages sound" to None. Or, for any app, open System Settings → Notifications, pick the app, and switch off "Play sound for notifications." You keep the badge and the banner; you just lose the noise.

This is permanent, not per-call, which is the trade-off. If the chime is useful when you're not on a call, turning it off for good isn't what you wanted — that's what Focus is for. If you never liked it anyway, this is the cleanest fix and it costs nothing.

Turn down the alert volume

There's one more built-in dial worth knowing. In System Settings → Sound, the Alert volume slider under Sound Effects sets how loud the system's own alert and interface sounds are, as a share of your output. Pull it down and those system beeps stop clipping over your calls. It's a single global slider, though — it doesn't separate Mail from Messages from a game, and it doesn't touch app playback like music. Handy as a blunt instrument; not a per-app control.

Where Focus stops: the apps that keep playing

Focus handles the chimes, but it can't touch a stream. The music that was already playing when the call started keeps going. The YouTube tab keeps going. A Slack huddle is a live audio stream, not a one-shot ding, so no notification setting quiets it. To ride those down during a call without silencing your call audio, you need the thing macOS never shipped: per-app volume.

A per-app mixer sits at the audio layer and gives every running app its own level in one place. Your call app stays at 100%; music drops to 20%; the browser goes to zero — each on its own fader, none of them dragging the others. Apps that play their own sounds — Mail's chime, Slack's pings and huddles, Messages — land on their own fader too, so you can hold them below the conversation instead of killing them outright. (For the system's own notification chimes, Focus is still the built-in tool — the two work well together.) Tools that do per-app volume on a Mac include Background Music (free, open source), SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba (paid, deep, with EQ), and Fader (paid, keyboard-first). They all set a level; where they differ is how fast you reach it.

A keyboard "meeting mode" for the noisy apps

The reason a mixer matters here isn't the levels — it's the timing. A call starts now, and you want the music, the video, and the huddle down now, not after you've hunted through the menu bar, found four different sliders, and dragged each one. If the fix is slow, you won't do it; you'll just yank the master and lose your whole mix.

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 — one letter column is your music, the next is the browser, the next is Slack — and you drop them with a keystroke each. Set the levels once as a scene, and starting a call becomes a single move: the loud apps duck, the call stays put, and one more keystroke brings everything back when you hang up. Pair that with Do Not Disturb for the chimes and your Mac finally goes quiet on cue instead of talking over your meeting.

If the flip side is your problem — you want alerts to stay audible while music sits low — the same idea runs the other way; see how to keep system alerts loud while music stays quiet on Mac. And if this is really about your whole workday, not one call, the remote worker's Mac audio setup walks through keeping calls, focus music, and notifications balanced back to back.

Bottom line

To keep Mail and notification sounds out of a call, reach for a Focus mode — Do Not Disturb, or the "sharing the display" toggle so it happens automatically. That's the right free fix for the chimes. What Focus can't do is quiet the music, video, and huddles that are still playing without silencing your call too; for that you need per-app volume, and the fastest way to ride it the instant a call starts is from the keyboard. Use Focus for the notifications and Fader for the apps, and your Mac stops interrupting the conversation.