Volumix is a native per-application audio mixer for macOS. It lives in the menu bar and lets you adjust volume, mute applications, monitor live audio levels, and route individual applications to different output devices.
It provides the per-application controls familiar from the Windows volume mixer without installing a virtual audio driver, kernel extension, or system extension.
- Automatically discovers applications that are currently producing audio.
- Provides independent volume and mute controls for each application.
- Displays a live level meter inside each volume control.
- Routes individual applications to available output devices.
- Restores saved gain, mute, and routing preferences.
- Opens from the menu bar or with the global
⌥⌘Vshortcut. - Supports launch at login.
- macOS 14.4 or later.
- Apple Silicon or Intel Mac supported by macOS 14.4+.
- Swift 6.1 or later. Xcode Command Line Tools are sufficient.
- System Audio Recording permission on first launch.
git clone https://github.com/OWNER/Volumix.git
cd Volumix
make runGrant System Audio Recording permission when macOS prompts. Volumix is a menu bar application, so it intentionally has no Dock icon. Select the slider icon in the menu bar to open the mixer.
Common commands:
make run # Build, package, sign locally, and launch.
make debug # Run in the terminal with audio graph diagnostics.
make app # Produce Volumix.app without launching it.
make stop # Stop the running instance safely.
make spike # Run the CoreAudio measurement tool.
make clean # Remove local build artifacts.For setup details, see Building. If the application does not appear or audio permission behaves unexpectedly, see Troubleshooting.
Volumix uses the CoreAudio Process Tap API available to third-party applications on macOS 14.4+.
Audio from each selected process is tapped with .mutedWhenTapped, mixed through a private
aggregate device, scaled in a real-time-safe IOProc, and written to the selected physical output.
Audio is processed in memory only. Volumix does not record, persist, or transmit audio.
Read Architecture for the signal path, lifecycle, and real-time constraints.
The core mixer, live meters, persistent settings, global shortcut, launch at login, and per-application output routing are implemented. Distribution packaging, notarization, and final application artwork remain on the roadmap.
See Roadmap for details.
- Applications that open an audio device in exclusive mode may not be tappable.
- Process taps use stereo mixdown; multichannel and Atmos content is reduced to stereo.
- System alerts from
systemsoundserverdand output owned directly bycoreaudiodintentionally bypass Volumix and do not appear as separate applications. - A force kill (
SIGKILL) cannot run cleanup code. Normal exit,SIGINT, andSIGTERMare handled.
- Architecture
- Design specification
- Roadmap
- Building and development
- Troubleshooting
- Release process
- Contributing
- Security policy
Contributions are welcome. Audio code has strict real-time and cleanup requirements, so read CONTRIBUTING.md and AGENTS.md before changing the audio path.
Volumix is available under the MIT License.