Ballad comes with no warranty. If you need help with Ballad, you can contact support.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ballad is a native macOS menu bar mixer for per-app volume control. It lets you lower, raise, or mute individual apps without changing your global system volume.
Apps appear while they are actively playing audio, and changes apply in real time from the menu bar popover.
Ballad requires macOS 15.0 or newer. It relies on modern Core Audio process taps that are not available on older macOS versions.
Ballad uses macOS Core Audio process taps to capture an app's audio stream, apply your selected volume, and route the result to your output device.
This is not microphone recording. Ballad does not use the microphone, record audio, save audio, or transmit audio. Audio samples are processed locally in memory and discarded immediately after playback.
Ballad may request this permission at launch so setup is complete before you start mixing apps.
No. Ballad is designed for the Mac App Store sandbox. It does not install kernel extensions, system audio drivers, background daemons, global keyboard hooks, or Accessibility overrides.
No. Global hotkeys require system-wide event monitoring APIs that do not fit Ballad's Mac App Store sandbox model. The menu bar popover is the main control surface.
Ballad shows regular apps while they are actively producing audio. Start playback in the app, then open Ballad again or press Refresh.
Some helper processes, plugins, system sounds, and background services are filtered out intentionally.
Ballad saves local preferences such as per-app volume, mute state, appearance, and launch-at-login settings. These values stay in macOS user preferences on your Mac.
You can turn off remembered mute state or use Reset Saved Mixer State to clear per-app volume and mute data.
No. Unlike some other Rosie.run projects, Ballad is proprietary closed-source commercial software. It is still designed around local processing, no telemetry, and macOS sandboxing.
Read the privacy policy to learn how Ballad handles your data and keeps your system secure.
View Privacy Policy