FineTune: per-app volume control for the macOS menu bar

What FineTune solves on a Mac that only has one volume slider

macOS exposes a single output volume for the whole system. If a browser tab, a call app and a music player are all playing at once, you can only turn everything down. FineTune puts a separate slider and mute control on each application, and adds 2x, 3x and 4x gain presets so a quiet app can be pushed up without touching the others.

The audience is narrow and specific: people on macOS 15 or later who run several audio sources at the same time, or who own headphones that need correction, or who want to send one app to a USB DAC while everything else stays on the built-in speakers. The README positions it directly as a free and open-source alternative to SoundSource, which is the paid app most Mac users reach for first.

Two smaller features matter more than they look. Pinned apps stay visible in the menu bar even when silent, so you can set volume, EQ and routing before the app plays anything. Ignore apps does the opposite: FineTune tears down the audio tap for that app so it returns to normal macOS audio handling.

How the audio tap, routing and EQ pipeline fit together

FineTune works by tapping each application's audio rather than by replacing the system output device. That is why the Screen & System Audio Recording permission is requested on first launch: on current macOS the process-tap APIs live behind that grant. Once an app is tapped, FineTune owns its level, so the per-app slider, the boost presets and the mute all act on the same signal before it reaches an output.

Routing is a second layer on top of that tap. An app can be sent to a specific output device or left to follow the system default, and multi-device output sends audio to several devices at once. Device priority decides which device FineTune switches to when something new connects, with automatic fallback when a device disappears. Auto-restore is the counterpart: when a device reconnects, apps return to it with their volume, routing and EQ intact.

The EQ section is per app and per device. There is a 10-band EQ with 20 presets across five categories, plus user presets you can save and rename. AutoEQ headphone correction searches headphone profiles or accepts imported ParametricEQ.txt files. Loudness compensation uses ISO 226:2023 equal-loudness contours to lift bass and treble at low volumes. Volume control itself is not one code path: FineTune picks hardware, DDC or software volume per device, and if a USB DAC or HDMI output has a hardware slider that does not actually change level, you can force software volume from the device inspector and the choice is remembered for that device.

Installing FineTune with Homebrew and a first pass through the popup

The README recommends the Homebrew cask. This pulls the signed app from the releases page and installs it into your Applications folder:

brew install --cask finetune

There is also a manual path: download the latest release from the GitHub releases page and open the disk image. Either way, launch FineTune from Applications. On first run it asks for Screen & System Audio Recording permission. The README states that apps playing audio appear automatically once that grant is given, so there is no device list to configure before you start.

After the grant, click the FineTune icon in the menu bar. Each app currently producing sound shows up as a row with its own slider. To test the core behaviour, play something in one app, then drag its slider down without touching anything else.

The README's own tip covers the routing setup people most often want. Open edit mode with the pencil icon and drag your preferred device above the built-in speakers. The README describes this as a one-time setup and says the order is saved permanently, which means the next time that device connects, FineTune switches to it automatically instead of waiting for you to pick it.

Where FineTune is the wrong tool

The Screen & System Audio Recording permission is the first hard boundary. FineTune cannot control per-app volume without it, and granting a screen and system audio recording entitlement to a menu bar utility is a decision some users and some managed Macs will not make. The README does not describe a reduced mode that works without it.

The macOS floor is the second boundary. The repository badge states macOS 15 or later. On anything older, FineTune is simply not an option, and there is no fallback build described.

Third, this is an audio-tap design, which means every controlled app runs through FineTune's pipeline. The ignore-apps feature exists precisely because that is not always desirable: the README says ignoring an app tears down the tap so the app returns to normal macOS audio. If you want untouched bit-perfect output for a specific player, you are relying on that escape hatch rather than on FineTune staying out of the way by default.

Finally, the README documents no rollback or uninstall procedure, and no way to export your per-app volume, routing and EQ configuration before removing the app. For a tool that rewrites how every app reaches your speakers, that is a real gap, and it is the thing I would want answered before deploying it on a work machine.

FineTune against SoundSource and against macOS's own media keys

The README names SoundSource as the comparison point, and the difference is mostly licensing and price rather than capability. SoundSource is a commercial product from Rogue Amoeba; FineTune is GPL-3.0 and free. Both occupy the same slot in the menu bar and both do per-app volume and routing. The README's framing is that FineTune is the free and open-source alternative, which tells you the feature set is meant to overlap rather than to be a subset.

If you do not want a third-party tap at all, the built-in option is macOS's own F10 to F12 media keys. FineTune treats those keys as an opt-in feature rather than a replacement: the README says F10 to F12 control for the default output device is opt-in, with a Tahoe-style or Classic-style on-screen HUD. The interesting detail is that the write goes through FineTune's volume pipeline, so the README claims the keys keep working on USB interfaces and HDMI outputs where macOS's own keys are greyed out because the hardware slider is broken. That is a concrete difference from the stock behaviour, not a restatement of it.

A third path is doing nothing and living with one system volume. That is a legitimate choice, and FineTune only makes sense if you actually run into the problem it solves.

Maintenance, licence and what upgrading costs you

The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-07-09. The releases list shows v1.9.0 on 2026-07-09, v1.8.0 on 2026-06-14 and v1.7.0 on 2026-05-14, which is a roughly monthly cadence across those three releases. There is an appcast.xml at the repository root, which is the standard Sparkle update feed, so the app has a self-update path rather than requiring a manual reinstall each time.

The licence is GPL-3.0. For individual users this changes nothing about day-to-day use. For anyone thinking about bundling FineTune into a larger product, or shipping a modified build, GPL-3.0 carries source-distribution obligations, and this article is not legal advice on what those mean for your specific case.

Upgrade cost is the part the README does not address. It does not document a migration path for saved EQ presets, per-device software-volume overrides or routing order between versions. The appcast suggests updates arrive in place, but whether your configuration survives a major version is something the README is silent on. If you build up a large set of user EQ presets, that silence is worth weighing.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt FineTune if you are on macOS 15 or later and want per-app volume, multi-device routing and EQ without paying for SoundSource, and you accept that it needs the Screen & System Audio Recording permission and that the README documents no rollback path. Skip it if you are on an older macOS release or need a documented uninstall procedure. Before installing, read the Screen & System Audio Recording permission section and the ignore-apps behaviour, and confirm your macOS version against the badge.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. License: GPL-3.0
3. README
4. Releases
5. ronitsingh10/FineTune on GitHub