How to lower other apps' volume while you talk on a Mac

You start a call or begin dictating, and the music in the background keeps playing at full volume. Lowering other audio while you speak is called ducking.

The manual way

Turn the volume of the other app down, or pause it. That works, but you have to remember every time, and you have to turn it back up afterwards.

Using a call app’s own setting

Some conferencing and recording apps can reduce background audio, and some offer a voice-isolation mode for your microphone. Check the app’s audio settings. This helps with what others hear from you, not with what you hear from other apps.

Automatic ducking on the Mac

macOS doesn’t duck other apps’ audio for you in general, so you need a tool. Options include audio utilities with a ducking feature, such as Background Music’s auto-pause, or Gardner’s Quiet while I talk, which is built around microphone use.

How Quiet while I talk works in Gardner

1. Open Gardner from the menu bar and switch on Quiet while I talk in the Sound section.
2. When an app starts listening to your microphone, such as a dictation tool or a call, Gardner quiets the other apps so your microphone doesn’t pick them up. The Sound section shows a live line saying which app it is quieting for.
3. When the app stops listening, the other apps come back to their previous volume after a short pause.
4. If you’re on headphones, Gardner leaves things alone by default, since nothing can leak back into your microphone.

Gardner only needs to check for new listeners while this switch is on. To catch the moment a dictation helper starts listening, it checks twice a second while the switch is on. With it off, Gardner does no background work at all.

Tips for cleaner calls

• Use headphones, which stops your microphone picking up the speakers.
• Close apps that play notification sounds.
• Set your preferred input in System Settings → Sound → Input.

If audio glitches, try the basics from controlling volume per app and restart your Mac.