Unduck Pro - macOS ducks your media during calls and gives you no switch. This is a free one.
The problem
You're listening to something. A call starts on FaceTime, Zoom, Meet or Teams. macOS immediately drops everything else to a whisper. It's called audio ducking, it's on by default, and there is no setting anywhere in System Settings to turn it off.
The threads about this on Apple's own forums are years old. The most-repeated "fix" is unchecking boxes in VoiceOver Utility, which doesn't really work. The apps that do solve it properly cost real money - SoundSource is $49.
What it does
Unduck Pro is a small menu bar app that keeps your media at full volume during a call. The person on the other end still hears only you — your audio is never pushed into your mic.
While it's there, it also gives you a per-app volume mixer and an output device switcher:
- Media stays loud on calls — FaceTime, Zoom, Meet, Teams and others▎
- Independent call volume — turn the call down without touching your music
- Per-app volume mixer, remembered per app
- Output switcher — speakers, AirPods, whatever, without opening System Settings
- Launch at login, update notifications, favourites.
How it works
Built entirely on Apple's public Core Audio process-tap API (macOS 14.2+). No kernel extensions, no virtual audio drivers, no third-party code. It continuously resets the OS ducking rather than boosting anything, so there's no added gain and no distortion.
Free, and actually free
MIT licensed, no paywall, no trial, no account, no telemetry. The whole source is on GitHub — read it, build it yourself, fork it.
🔗 Repo: https://github.com/MrRockySL/Unduck-Pro
Download: https://github.com/MrRockySL/Unduck-Pro/releases/latest
Two things to know before you install
It's self-signed, not notarized. Apple's notarization costs $99/year and this is a free app, so macOS will block the first launch with "Apple could not verify it is free of malware". You'll need System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. If that's a dealbreaker, completely fair — build it from source instead, it's two commands.
It asks for microphone permission. I know how that sounds for a volume app. The Core Audio tap API Apple provides is gated behind the audio-input permission — there's no way around it. It does not record, store or transmit anything, and since the source is public you can verify that rather than take my word for it.
Requires macOS 14.2 or later. Universal — runs natively on both Intel and Apple Silicon.
If you find it useful, a ⭐ on the repo genuinely helps — it's how anyone else searching for this problem ends up finding it. And if something's broken or missing, open an issue: https://github.com/MrRockySL/Unduck-Pro/issues — every issue so far has turned into a fix.
I'm the developer. Happy to answer anything in the comments.