Balance Lock For Mac

The audio balance in the latest Mac models is quite finicky, especially when you need to plug and unplug your headphones a lot each day.

This is a well-known macOS bug experienced by many Mac users who have to use the Sound preference pane in the System Preferences or the Audio Midi Setup app from the Applications>Utilities folder to manually get it centered again each time they disconnect their headphones.

Balance Lock is a simple to use macOS utility designed from the ground up to stop your Mac's audio balance sliding to the right or the left, sounding just enough off to be annoying while listening to music or watching movies.

Moreover, Balance Lock is a minimalist little tool which runs in the background monitoring your Mac's audio balance and automatically centering it whenever it drifts left or right after you unplug your headphones.

The Balance Lock app adds a status bar item which enables you to toggle the audio balance with just a mouse click, as well as give you access to the app's Preferences window.

Via Balance Lock's Preferences, you can set up the app to automatically launch on startup, to run in the background and to keep a close eye on your Mac's audio balance. It is important to mention that although it stays in the background, Balance Lock gets into sleep mode until the audio balance changes.

Balance Lock can also be configured to notify you when it restores the sound balance to center and to be more verbose, with extra console output for simpler debugging, if needed.

Throughout our tests, Balance Lock worked perfectly and, despite the fact that we haven't experienced the audio balance bug it is designed to fix, it did instantly re-established the correct balance after we modified it manually.

Regarding the bugs and downsides we experienced, there were none, but Balance Lock would definitely need a headless mode option for users who don't want an extra icon in their Mac's status bar.

In a nutshell, if you've ever experienced a buggy audio balance after unplugging your headphones from your Mac, you should give Balance Lock a spin as it will restore it automatically, saving you significant amounts of time and frustration each day.