How to set a keyboard shortcut to mute an app on Mac

macOS has no built-in keyboard shortcut to mute a single app — the mute key silences the whole system at once. To bind a hotkey that mutes just one app (Spotify, Zoom, a browser) while everything else keeps playing, you need a per-app mixer. In Fader you assign a global shortcut like ⌘⇧M to toggle mute on one app, and it works from inside any other window.

This is one of those gaps you don't notice until you hit it. You're on a call, music is still going, and you want it gone now — not "open the app, find the slider, drag it" gone, but one-keystroke gone. On Windows you'd right-click the volume icon. On a Mac, the obvious move — tapping the mute key — takes the call audio down with the music. Here's why, and the real ways to get a true per-app mute hotkey.

Why the Mac mute key won't mute just one app

The mute key on your keyboard (and the speaker icon in Control Center) acts on the system's master output device. macOS mixes every app down to that one device and gives you one level and one mute for the whole thing. There's no per-app layer in between. So when you tap mute, the OS isn't muting "the app you're looking at" — it's muting everything routed to your speakers or headphones. Apple has never shipped a Windows-style per-app mixer, which is the root of this and a dozen related annoyances.

That means a per-app mute shortcut has to come from somewhere other than the system mute. You have three honest paths: lean on each app's own shortcut, automate it with the Shortcuts app, or install a mixer that adds a real per-app mute hotkey.

Option 1 — Each app's own mute shortcut (free, hit or miss)

Some apps ship their own mute. The problem is that "mute" rarely means what you want. Zoom's ⌘⇧A mutes your microphone, not the audio Zoom is playing at you. Browsers let you mute a tab, but only by clicking the speaker icon — there's no global hotkey, and it dies the moment you switch tabs. Spotify has no built-in mute hotkey at all; the media keys only play and pause.

So the free route works for the handful of apps that happen to expose what you need, and leaves you window-hunting for the rest. If you only ever silence one well-behaved app, it's fine. If "the thing I want quiet" changes through the day, it's the exact friction this category exists to remove.

Option 2 — The macOS Shortcuts app (free, clunky)

macOS lets you give any Shortcut a keyboard shortcut that fires system-wide. A few audio apps publish Shortcuts actions you can wire up this way — SoundSource, for instance, exposes a "Set Source Mute" action you could drop into a Shortcut and trigger from a hotkey. It's a legitimate path, and it's free if you already own an app that exposes the action.

The catch is that you're building automation by hand: create the Shortcut, pick the action, assign a key combo, and hope nothing else has claimed it. For a one-off it's overkill, and toggling (mute, then unmute with the same key) usually means extra logic. It works, but it's a project, not a setting.

Option 3 — A per-app mute hotkey (the real fix)

The clean answer is a mixer that treats "mute this specific app from a global key" as a first-class feature. A few Mac apps live in this space, and they're honestly different from each other. Background Music is free and open source, but it's menu-bar driven — you mute an app by clicking its row in the dropdown, with no built-in per-app mute hotkey. SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba is a deep, polished tool that does per-app volume, routing, and EQ, and it can drive mute from keyboard shortcuts; it's a $49 one-time purchase. Fader is the keyboard-first one: assigning a global mute key per app is the point of the app, and it's $19.99 one-time.

How to set a per-app mute shortcut in Fader

Fader keeps this to a few steps. In the Console, open the Global Shortcuts section and add a new shortcut:

1. Click + New shortcut in Global Shortcuts.
2. Press the key combo you want — say ⌘⇧M.
3. Pick the target app (Spotify, Zoom, your browser — anything currently making sound).
4. Choose the action Toggle mute.

That's it. From then on ⌘⇧M mutes and unmutes that one app from anywhere — you don't have to switch to it, find a slider, or even see it. Bind a different combo per app and you've got a row of dedicated mute keys: one for the music, one for the call, one for the noisy browser tab. Because the shortcut is global, it fires while you're typing in a completely different app.

Mute the focused app vs a specific app

There are two flavors worth knowing. A per-app shortcut always hits the same target — ⌘⇧M is always Spotify, no matter what's on screen. A focused-app shortcut mutes whatever app you're currently using, which is handy as a single panic button: one key, and the thing in front of you goes quiet. Fader supports both, so you can map your two or three regulars to fixed keys and keep a focused-app mute as a catch-all (some people park it on a key like F19).

If you'd rather ride levels than hard-mute, the same idea scales: hit Fader's toggle hotkey to drop into Fader Mode and the keyboard becomes a mixer, with each app on its own column of letter keys. Muting is just the fastest case of the broader workflow in controlling individual app volume on a Mac, and it's closely related to lowering one app's volume without lowering everything.

Bottom line

macOS gives you one master mute and nothing finer, so a single-app mute shortcut has to come from a third-party tool. If an app already has its own mute hotkey and that's all you need, use it — it's free. For everything else — Spotify, a browser, a noisy Electron app, or just one panic key for whatever's loud — a per-app mixer is the fix. Fader is built around exactly that: bind a key, pick an app, choose Toggle mute, and the noise is one keystroke away no matter what you're doing.