Per-app volume control on Windows

What per-app volume actually means

The goal is simple: the game at one level, music quieter underneath it, the browser tamed, and your call clearly on top, each adjustable without touching the others. Windows ships a tool for exactly this, the Volume Mixer, and it is the right first stop. It sets real per-app levels and costs you nothing. So start there, know exactly where it stops, and then decide whether you need more.

Step 1: open the Windows Volume Mixer

On Windows 11, right-click the speaker icon in the corner of the taskbar and choose Open volume mixer. That lands you in Settings, under System, then Sound, then Volume mixer, where each app that is currently playing sound gets its own slider. On Windows 10, right-click the same speaker icon and choose Open Volume Mixer to get the classic window with a slider per app.

One quirk to know up front: an app only appears in the mixer while it is producing audio. If the slider you want is missing, play something in that app and it will show up.

Step 2: set a level per app

Each app slider is a percentage of the master volume, so 50 on an app means half of whatever the master is set to. Drop the browser, pull the game down a notch, leave your call app high. For the common case, one app is too loud over another and you want it fixed in the next ten seconds, this works, and you should absolutely use it.

Where the built-in mixer stops

The Volume Mixer is a set of sliders, and that is the whole product. Four limits show up quickly once you rely on it every day:

• Levels do not reliably stay set. Windows remembers app levels per output device, so switching from speakers to a headset can bring back different numbers, and some apps open a fresh audio session and reappear at full volume. You end up re-fixing the same balance week after week.
• There are no meters. Every slider is blind. You cannot see how loud the game actually is right now, only where you left its handle. Setting a level means guessing, listening, and guessing again.
• Everything still shares one endpoint. The mixer scales apps that are all summed into the same output. It cannot send your music one place and your game another; that is a routing problem, and the mixer does not do routing.
• There is no processing. A level is the only thing you can change. No way to gate a noisy mic, even out a quiet talker on a call, or EQ a harsh game mix.

One extra trap worth knowing: the old Sound control panel has a Communications setting that automatically ducks everything else, by 80 percent by default, whenever Windows detects a call. If your music mysteriously drops when someone rings you, that setting is why, not your mixer sliders.

Step 3: give every source its own strip

A virtual audio mixer treats per-app volume as the starting point instead of the feature. In patchd, every source is a strip with its own fader, a live meter, and mute and solo buttons. Two strips are always there without any setup: Desktop for your system audio and Communications for your chat apps, which already separates the call from everything else, the exact split the Windows mixer struggles to hold onto.

Then add what you want to control individually. Your microphone becomes a strip, and a specific app, say your music player, gets pulled onto its own strip with a virtual cable; the walkthrough in how to route audio per app on Windows covers that move. On the free tier you get two selectable inputs, your mic plus one cable, on top of the fixed Desktop and Communications strips, with three hardware outputs and three buses to route them to.

Step 4: set levels with your eyes, not your memory

This is the practical difference the meters make. Play the game, start the music, talk into the mic, and watch each strip's meter move in real time. Now a level is not a guess: if the music meter is riding as high as the game meter, you can see the problem before you hear it, and you pull the music fader down until the meters tell the story you want. Your fader positions then stay where you left them from session to session, instead of quietly resetting the way Windows app levels tend to.

Step 5: volume is the start, not the whole story

Under each fader sits a row of routing pills, one per destination: your hardware outputs, like headphones and speakers, and the buses that other apps can treat as a microphone. Lighting a pill sends that strip to that destination; leaving it unlit keeps it out. Each strip has exactly one fader, so two destinations differ by which strips are included, not by separate volumes per destination, which keeps the whole mix readable at a glance. That is how you keep music in your headphones but out of a recording, the kind of decision the Windows mixer simply has no concept of.

And because every strip carries an effects rack you fill from a + Add Node menu, the level you set can be a level worth setting: a noise gate and a compressor on the mic strip, an EQ where something sounds harsh. The essentials are all on the free tier.

The honest summary

Use the Windows Volume Mixer when one app is too loud and you want it fixed right now; it does per-app levels and it is already installed. Reach for a real mixer when you are tired of blind sliders that reset, when different destinations need different mixes, or when volume alone stopped being enough. patchd is built as exactly that second step, and it is in development now. Join the waitlist and we will tell you the moment it is ready to install.