macOS gives you one master volume, so the volume keys move your game and your voice chat together — you can't just turn the game down to hear your team. To balance game audio against Discord (or any voice app) on a Mac, you either ride each app's own in-game and in-app sliders by hand, or you install a per-app mixer that gives the game and the voice app their own level in one place and lets you cap the loud one without touching the other.
Every Mac gamer hits the same wall eventually. The game gets loud in a firefight, your teammate's callout gets buried, and your only quick control — the volume keys — pulls both down at once. Turn the system up to hear the voice channel and now the game is deafening. There is no native "game at 40%, Discord at 100%" on a Mac, because the OS was never built around per-app volume. This guide covers the real ways to get that balance, from free-but-fiddly to fast-and-repeatable.
Why the Mac volume keys can't fix this
On Windows, the Volume Mixer has let you set a separate level per app since Vista — game here, voice chat there, browser somewhere else. macOS never shipped that panel. The function-row volume keys, the Control Center slider, and the Sound settings pane all move a single master output. Whatever mix of game and voice is playing, they scale it uniformly. So the balance problem isn't something you're doing wrong; it's a feature that macOS simply doesn't have. Everything below is a way to add it back.
Option 1 — In-game and in-app sliders (free, but scattered)
The zero-cost route is to use whatever volume controls the game and your voice app already expose. Discord has its own output slider and per-user volume, so you can push voice up. Many games have a master or SFX slider buried in an audio settings menu, so you can pull the game down. Set the game low, the voice app high, and you've got a rough balance for free.
The problem is that it's slow and it's not always there. Game audio menus live behind two or three screens, and you can't open them mid-match — you're not pausing a ranked queue to drag a slider. Plenty of games, especially older or emulated titles, ship with no useful in-game volume at all. And even when every slider exists, they're in four different places, so re-balancing on the fly means alt-tabbing and hunting. For a one-time setup it's fine. For the constant small adjustments a real session needs, it's the exact friction that drives people to a mixer.
Option 2 — A per-app volume mixer (the real fix)
A per-app mixer sits at the macOS audio layer and gives every running app — the game, Discord, your music, the browser — its own volume in one place. This is the only approach that works on a game with no slider of its own, because it acts on the app's output stream rather than asking the app to cooperate. You set the game to 40% once, leave voice at full, and the balance holds for the whole session no matter what the game's internal audio does.
Several tools do per-app volume on a Mac, and they're all honest options. They differ less in whether they can hold your game below your voice chat and more in how fast you reach the control when the mix needs a nudge.
| Approach | Works on a game with no slider? | Reach the control | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-game + Discord sliders | Only if the game has one | Alt-tab, dig through menus | Free |
| Background Music | Yes | Menu bar list | Free, open source |
| SoundSource | Yes | Menu bar panel + EQ | $49 one-time |
| Fader | Yes | Keyboard hotkeys + menu bar | $19.99 one-time |
Background Music is free and open source and will absolutely hold your game below Discord — a great pick if budget is the priority and you don't mind reaching for a menu-bar list. SoundSource (from Rogue Amoeba, $49 one-time as of version 6) is the deep, polished option with per-app EQ on top. Fader is the keyboard-first one, built for people who re-balance constantly and want to do it without leaving the game.
Why the keyboard is the right controller for gaming
Here's the thing a menu-bar mixer misses for gamers: a firefight, a callout, and a lull all need different mixes, and they change second to second. Reaching a menu-bar list means moving to the top of the screen, clicking the icon, finding the game's row, dragging the slider, dismissing the panel — five actions, and you're alt-tabbed out of the game the whole time. In a match, that's not happening.
Fader's approach is to make your keyboard the mixer. You tap a global toggle hotkey and letter keys become faders: one column rides the game, the next rides Discord, and you nudge either without leaving the game window or moving your hand to the mouse. You can also bind a per-app mute key, so "kill the game audio for a second so I can hear this callout" is one keystroke. For the moment-to-moment balancing that gaming actually demands, that's the difference between a mixer you own and a mixer you use.
A simple starting balance
If you just want a sane default to start from, this holds up for most competitive play:
| Source | Suggested level | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Voice chat (Discord) | 90–100% | Teammate callouts should always cut through |
| Game | 40–60% | Loud enough for footsteps and cues, quiet enough not to bury voice |
| Music / browser | 20–40% | Background only; mute instantly when it matters |
Set voice first and treat it as the reference, then bring the game up until it's present but never louder than a callout. With a per-app mixer you save this once; with a keyboard mixer you can also deviate from it on the fly — drop the game during comms, bring it back for the push — without ever touching a menu.
What about sending game and voice to different outputs?
Volume balancing is one half of a Mac gamer's audio setup; the other is routing — sending game audio to your headphones while voice or stream audio goes somewhere else. macOS uses one output device for everything by default, so that also needs a third-party tool. If separate devices, not just separate levels, is your goal, read how to send game audio to headphones and voice chat to a different output on Mac. And if your specific pain is Discord getting drowned out, there's a focused walkthrough on keeping Discord loud while lowering game volume.
Bottom line
macOS gives Mac gamers one master volume and nothing finer, which is exactly why the game keeps burying your team. For a one-time setup, in-game and Discord sliders are free and will get you a rough balance. For a mix you set once and adjust mid-match without alt-tabbing — game capped, voice on top, music one keystroke from silent — a per-app mixer is the real answer. If reaching that control fast, without leaving the game, is what you care about, that's what Fader is built for.
Balance game and voice from your keyboard
Fader turns letter keys into per-app faders — cap the game, keep voice on top, mute music in a keystroke, all without alt-tabbing. $19.99 one-time, 3-day free trial, no account. macOS 14.4+.