How to Watch Multiple Videos on a Mac Without the Audio Chaos: Hear Only the Video You're Looking At, Mix Two, or Play Everything

To hear only one video when several are playing on a Mac, mute the other tabs by hand: in Safari, click the speaker icon in the address bar (Option-click may mute every other tab), and in Chrome right-click a tab and choose Mute site. If you would rather not do that every time you look somewhere else, Plush Media Player has a free Focus sound mode that plays only the tile you hover or select, plus Adaptive and Chaos modes (part of Plush Pro) for mixing or hearing everything.

The short answer

Open four videos on a Mac and you get four soundtracks at once. macOS has no master switch that says "only the one I'm looking at," so the usual fix is a handful of small mutes spread across browser tabs, player sliders and system volume. That works fine for two videos. It stops working somewhere around three.

Here is where each approach lands:

• Free and built in: Safari's tab speaker icon, Chrome's Mute site, and the volume slider inside each player. Reliable, but you are the audio router, and every change of attention means a click.
• Third-party volume tools: macOS has no per-app volume mixer of its own. We are not recommending any here, and they work per app, which does not help when all your videos live in one browser.
• A player that routes sound for you: Plush Media Player (free on the Mac App Store, macOS 14 or later) puts up to three tiles in one window, or eight with Plush Pro, a one-time $2.99 upgrade. It has three sound modes. Focus, which is free, follows your pointer or selection. Adaptive ducks everything else instead of silencing it. Chaos plays everything. Both are Plush Pro.

We built Plush because we kept doing this by hand on game days. For the background, see multi-screen video on a Mac or MacBook. The free methods come first, so you can judge where they stop being worth it.

Why multiple videos on a Mac overlap in the first place

Every player and every browser tab is its own audio source. macOS mixes them all into one output and gives you one system volume slider. Nothing in that chain knows which window you are looking at, so a streamer's chatter, a game's crowd noise and a lecture's narration arrive together at the same loudness.

Sports fans with four games, streamers watching two channels, students with a lecture and a reference video, and anyone with music running all hit this.

Free ways to hear only one video on a Mac

Safari: the tab speaker icon and Option-click

When a Safari tab is playing audio, a speaker icon appears in the Smart Search (address) field and on the tab itself. Click it to mute that page; click again to unmute. Apple's Safari guide (Apple Support: Safari User Guide) covers tab audio controls. In our experience, holding ⌥ (Option) while clicking the speaker mutes every other tab and leaves the current one playing, but check that on your macOS version, because we could not confirm it in Apple's documentation. If it works for you, it is the closest thing the free tools have to a "hear only this one" button.

The limit is that it is per tab, not per window. If you are watching four videos in four Safari tabs, you only see one at a time anyway. If you are watching them in four separate Safari windows, expect Option-click to affect only the tabs in that window, so you can still end up with sound from the others. And each time your attention moves, you click again.

Chrome: right-click, Mute site

In Chrome, right-click a tab and choose Mute site. Chrome's help pages describe it as muting a site rather than a single tab (Google Chrome Help), which is the part to watch: if two of your four videos are on the same site, muting one site silences both.

The player's own volume slider

Every player has a volume control, from QuickTime's slider to the ones inside streaming sites. It is precise, it does not touch anything else, and it also means four sliders in four different places, some of which hide until you hover.

System volume and per-app mixers

macOS gives you a single output volume. Unlike Windows, it does not include a built-in per-app volume mixer. Third-party apps that add one exist, and they can be useful for turning down a whole app, say all of Safari against Apple Music. We are not endorsing any of them. They operate on apps, so two videos inside the same browser still share one slider.

Where the free methods break down

With two videos, muting one is a single click. With three or more, every shift of attention means unmuting the video you want, muting the ones you do not, and hunting for the music tab, each in a different place. The one you forget is always the one that talks over the moment you wanted. The sound should follow your attention, and that is the job we gave Plush's sound modes.

Plush's three sound modes: Focus, Adaptive and Chaos

Plush puts up to three tiles in one window for free, or eight with Plush Pro, and each tile can hold something from the web, a local file, or Apple Music. The sidebar has a Sound section with three buttons. Whichever one you pick applies to every tile at once, and it is saved with your sessions. In short:

• Focus (the default): only the hovered or selected tile is heard.
• Adaptive (Plush Pro): the hovered or selected tile plays at full volume and everything else drops to a low "ambient" level.
• Chaos (Plush Pro): every tile plays at its own volume, all the time.

Focus: sound follows the tile you are looking at

In Focus, a tile is audible only if it is the one you have selected, or, when nothing is selected, the one under your pointer. Move the pointer from the football game to the stream and the sound goes with it. Video and web tiles are muted when they lose focus. Rest the pointer over no tile at all, in the gutter or on the title bar, and nothing plays.

To pin the sound to a tile, double-click it. That marks the tile as audio-selected, shows a glow around it, and from then on the sound stays there no matter where the pointer goes. Double-click the same tile again to release it. An explicit selection always beats hover, so you can lock the commentary tile, wander the pointer over three other games, and still hear the commentary.

Music is handled a little differently, and it is worth knowing. Apple Music has one shared playback engine on the Mac with no per-tile volume, so Plush cannot turn a music tile down. In Focus it pauses the music when focus moves to another tile, and resumes it when focus comes back. Each music tile has a Keep playing toggle (the speaker icon in its bottom toolbar) that opts it out, so a playlist can run underneath whatever else you focus.

Adaptive (Plush Pro): the focused tile on top, the rest as background

Adaptive keeps everything playing but changes the balance. The focused tile (selected, or hovered when nothing is selected) plays at its own full volume. Every other video or web tile plays at its own volume multiplied by the Ambient Level, a slider that appears under the mode buttons when Adaptive is on. The default is 15 percent, and it ranges from 0 to 50 percent. Changes fade over about 0.3 seconds. A tile you have muted individually, or Master Mute, still wins over Adaptive.

Exactly how that plays out depends on the source:

• Local video and audio files: the tile's volume is scaled by the ambient level and fades smoothly.
• Web tiles: the page's volume is ramped to the same scaled level, with the same fade.
• Apple Music tiles: no ducking. The music keeps playing until you pause it, because Apple's player has no per-tile volume to lower.

Adaptive suits keeping half an ear on the other tiles, such as hearing a second game's crowd swell.

Chaos (Plush Pro): everything plays

Chaos does what it says. Every visible tile is audible at its own volume, including Apple Music. It suits comparing two takes by ear, or a moment when you want everything audible. Because you still have per-tile volume, Chaos does not have to be chaotic: you can set one tile loud and the others low once, and they stay put.

Per-tile volume, per-tile mute and Master Mute

Hover over a video or web tile and a volume bar appears at the left edge. Each tile remembers its own setting, and Adaptive's ducking is calculated from it. Right-click a tile and choose Mute Tile to silence just that one in any mode. Master Mute is the big switch: the speaker button in the sidebar's Sound header, or the M key, mutes every tile at once, music included, and unmuting restores the sound exactly as it was. There is also ⌥⌘M, which works even when a web tile has keyboard focus.

Music tiles are the one exception to the volume bar. Because the Apple Music player has no per-tile volume on the Mac, Plush does not draw a slider that cannot work. Use Keep playing, pause, or Master Mute for music.

Which sound mode for which situation

Four setups that use these modes

Four games, one commentary. Load three streams (or four with Plush Pro) into the grid, then double-click the broadcast whose announcers you like. It glows and the other three go quiet. Our multiview guide covers the full game-day layout.

A stream plus background Apple Music. Put the stream in one tile and a playlist in another. In Focus, turn on Keep playing for the music tile so the playlist continues while you hover the stream. Plush does not duck music, so set its level in the Music app if it competes.

Lecture plus a muted reference video. Double-click the lecture tile. The reference video keeps playing silently beside it, and you can lock the sound onto it for a moment with two double-clicks.

Watch party. Lock Focus on the feed the room should hear and use the other tiles as visual context. This guide to watching several streams covers the layout side.

How to set up Plush to hear only one video

1. Install and open Plush. It is free on the Mac App Store, macOS 14 or later, with up to three tiles. Plush Pro, a one-time $2.99 upgrade, adds up to eight tiles and the Adaptive and Chaos steps below.
2. Fill the tiles. Click an empty tile and choose Local Files, Web or Music. Web tiles include the built-in streaming sites, and you can add other sites you want to use. Local files can also be dragged onto a tile from Finder.
3. Open the sidebar. Press ⌘\ and find the Sound section. It has three buttons: Focus, Adaptive and Chaos.
4. Pick Focus. It is already the default. Close the sidebar, then move the pointer across the tiles. Only the tile under the pointer is heard. (Hover-driven changes are held while the sidebar is open.)
5. Lock a tile. Double-click the tile you want to keep hearing. It glows. Double-click it again to release it.
6. Try Adaptive (Plush Pro). Reopen the sidebar, choose Adaptive, and drag the Ambient Level slider until the background tiles sit where you like them. The default is 15 percent.
7. Adjust individual tiles. Hover a video or web tile and use the volume bar on its left. Right-click and choose Mute Tile to silence one for good, or press M to mute everything.
8. Save it (Plush Pro). In the sidebar's Sessions section, save the session. It stores the sound mode and ambient level, so the setup returns next time.

What Plush does here that the free tools do not

Sound follows your attention, so the manual mute dance is gone. There is a mode for each way of watching: one tile, one tile over a background, or everything. It works across the web, local files and Apple Music in one window, which Safari's tab mutes and per-app mixers cannot do. The ambient level is adjustable, and the mode is saved with the session.

The honest limits: Apple Music tiles do not duck or have a volume slider, because the Mac's music player does not allow it. Plush is Mac only, and a service's own site decides what plays in a web tile, so sign in on the service's site as you would in a browser. The multi-video player page has the tile and layout details.

Frequently asked questions

How do I mute other tabs on a Mac?

In Safari, click the speaker icon in the address bar or on the tab to mute that page. Option-clicking it should mute all the other tabs, though we could not confirm that in Apple's documentation. In Chrome, right-click a tab and choose Mute site. Both are manual and apply per tab or per site, so they need repeating each time you switch attention.

Does macOS have a per-app volume mixer?

No. macOS offers one system output volume and no built-in per-app mixer. Third-party utilities add per-app volume, but they work on whole apps, so they cannot separate two videos playing inside the same browser.

Can I play music and a video at the same time on a Mac?

Yes. Any two audio sources play together by default. In Plush, put the video in one tile and an Apple Music tile in another. Use Adaptive (Plush Pro), where music keeps playing until you pause it, or turn on Keep playing for the music tile in Focus, which is free.

How do I hear only the video I'm looking at?

Use Plush's Focus mode. Only the tile under your pointer, or the tile you have selected by double-click, plays sound. Move to another tile and the audio moves with you.

What is the difference between Focus, Adaptive and Chaos in Plush?

Focus plays only the focused tile, and is free. Adaptive plays the focused tile at full volume and the others at an ambient level, 15 percent by default and adjustable from 0 to 50 percent. Chaos plays every tile at its own volume. Adaptive and Chaos are part of Plush Pro.

How do I keep the sound on one tile even when I move the mouse?

Double-click the tile. It becomes audio-selected, glows, and keeps the sound until you double-click it again. An explicit selection overrides hover.

Can I set a different volume for each video?

Yes, for video and web tiles. Hover the tile and use the volume bar on its left edge, or right-click and choose Mute Tile. Apple Music tiles have no per-tile volume on the Mac, so use Keep playing, pause, or Master Mute.

Plush Media Player is free on the Mac App Store, and Plush Pro is a one-time $2.99 with no subscription and no account. Put your videos in one window and let the sound follow your attention.