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I'm using USB headphones with a Mac Mini, and the lowest volume setting is too loud for most applications. Is there any way to increase the granularity (number of steps) in the volume control, or to apply some fractional factor to the volume level?

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6 Answers 6

Reset to default
31

Hold Shift + Option while you change the volume with the keyboard. You get 4 times finer volume control.

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  • 1
    That no longer works on Lion. However you can assign shortcuts to AppleScripts that change the volume in smaller increments.
    – Lri
    Commented Mar 15, 2012 at 14:04
  • I don't know about Lion, but it does work in Mountain Lion.
    – kpozin
    Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 20:06
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    works in mavericks too.
    – Do Not Track Me
    Commented May 27, 2014 at 21:26
  • The step between 0,016 (the lowest) and 0 is still a very big step using my USB headset. Got any more suggestions? Maybe shifting rather than scaling?
    – flindeberg
    Commented May 17, 2017 at 12:04
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    Lovely! It works in High Sierra ✌️
    – dAIvd
    Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 3:10
3

Option + Shift + Volume up and Option + Shift + Volume down will change the volume in smaller increments.

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2

What worked best to adjust the volume is going to Audio MIDI Setup and adjusting output volume by going to the device and editing front-left, front-right.

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I had the same problem using a USB Plantronics headset.

I went to system preferences -> Sound -> Output -> Plantronics Headset -> Output Volume

Increase that, then for myself, I chose my default sound output to the internal speakers. Otherwise all the system sounds come through the headset.

Hope that is what you were looking for.

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Just to be clear, if the poster is saying that the normal built-in volume control on Mac OS X doesn't allow him/her to lower the volume sufficiently, it may be possible to route the sound via a different sound driver (not the default system one).

You should be able to use an audio extension created in an app like Sound Flower.

To do this, in conjunction with the Audio MIDI Setup.app in your Utilities folder to control the 'master volume' in that extension, unless your particular USB speaker has that feature disabled.

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On macOS v12 (Monterey) and above

Use:

Shift + Option + Volume up/Volume down keys

This reduces the volume change amount to 25%, i.e., you can break up one change into four changes. So instead of the 16 steps you can have 64.

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