Background Music icon

Background Music For Mac

3.8/5 4
Certified 100% FREE GPL   

Pauses your music player when you start playing other audio content on your Mac and adds per app volume controls in the menu bar. #Pause music  #Control volume  #Record system audio  #Pause  #Volume  #Recorder  

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Background Music, as its name might suggest, is an open source macOS application which automatically manages what happens with the music playing in the background on your Mac.

More specifically, the Background Music app automatically pauses your music player (at the moment it comes with support for iTunes, Herms, Decibel, Spotify, VLC, and VOX), when you start playing any other audio content on your Mac.

Background Music also adds a status bar menu with individual app volume controls for all apps running on your Mac, a highly useful feature when you either need to boost an app's maximum audio volume or quiet down one with a very loud audio output.

Each app's volume controller listed in Background Music's interface also makes it possible for you to individually tweak the audio balance by clicking on the down arrow on the left side.

If you need to pick the music player to auto-pause or the audio device Background Music uses to manage your Mac's system audio you can do it from the Preferences sub-menu.

It is also important to mention that although it does keep your applications' volume levels in check while it runs in the background, once you quit Background Music their volumes will be restored.

Thus, you need to make sure that you're prepared if you accidentally quit the app since your Mac will most probably blast you off your chair if any of your apps are on maximum volume.

Background Music can also be used to record your Mac's system audio using Apple's QuickTime Player using a method described in detail in the "Recording system audio" section on Background Music's homepage.

Although Background Music performance during our tests was nothing short of stellar, we did find one drawback: the overcomplicated manual uninstall procedure.

Having said that and despite the fact that uninstalling Background Music is actually quite straightforward if you're familiar with the Terminal app, an uninstall option within the menu or an uninstaller added in the Applications folder would make the app a lot more user-friendly to beginner Mac users.

In a nutshell, Background Music might just be the system audio management app you never knew you needed, as it most definitely managed to give us this impression during our tests.

What's new in Background Music 0.4.0:

  • Make sure the installer launches BGMApp as the logged-in user. (4c7eba3)
  • Add app volume workaround for Google Chrome. See #61. (dfad77d)
  • BGMDriver: Copy settings when a new client matches an existing one. (f61f998)
  • Fix stale data when recording system audio #217 (40f0128)
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Background Music 0.4.0

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  runs on:
macOS 10.10 or later (Universal Binary)
  file size:
916 KB
  filename:
BackgroundMusic-0.4.0.pkg
  3 screenshots:
Background Music - The app's status bar menu is designed to give access to individual app volume controls.Background Music - Each app's volume controller also enables you to individually tweak the audio balance by clicking on the down arrow on the left side.Background Music - The Preferences sub-menu makes it easy to quickly pick the audio device and the music player to auto-pause.
  main category:
Audio
  developer:
  visit homepage