Guide

Does macOS have a built-in equalizer?

Last updated: August 4, 2026

No. macOS has no system-wide equalizer. There is no setting anywhere in System Settings that applies EQ to everything your Mac plays. The Music app includes its own 10-band equalizer, but it affects audio played through Music and nothing else. To equalize everything — browser video, calls, games, every other app — you need third-party software that installs a virtual audio device.

That's the whole answer. The rest of this page explains each option and why the limitation exists.

What macOS gives you on its own

The Music app equalizer

Open the Music app and choose Window → Equalizer. You get a 10-band graphic EQ with a set of named presets and a manual mode. It's a real equalizer and it's free, with two limits worth knowing: it only affects audio playing through the Music app, and it's a fixed 10-band graphic EQ, so you can't set your own frequencies, bandwidths or filter types.

If all you listen to is your own music library in the Music app, this may genuinely be all you need.

Equalizers built into individual apps

Some apps ship their own. VLC has an equalizer under its audio effects, Spotify has one on some platforms, and most DAWs and media players include EQ of some kind. Each one affects only that app, and each has its own interface, so a change you make in one is invisible to the others.

What macOS does not offer

• No global EQ that applies to all system audio.
• No per-app volume mixer of the kind Windows has had for years.
• No headphone correction for specific headphone models.
• No way to apply a measured correction curve to everything you hear.

Why isn't there one?

macOS routes audio from each app to an output device through Core Audio, and Apple provides no user-facing processing stage in between. Apple has never shipped a global equalizer, and there's no supported setting that adds one.

What Core Audio does allow is for software to publish its own audio device. That's the hook every system-wide equalizer on macOS uses.

How third-party system-wide equalizers work

They all use the same basic approach:

1. The app installs a virtual output device, a small piece of software that appears in your sound settings like any other output.
2. It makes that device your Mac's default output, so every app plays into it.
3. It processes that audio — equalization, volume, correction — and passes the result to your real speakers or headphones.

Two things follow from this. First, these apps ask for permission during setup: installing the device usually needs your password once, and macOS treats capturing the audio back as microphone access, so it will ask for that too. Second, quality depends entirely on what happens in step 3 — whether the processing adds latency, and whether it leaves the signal untouched when you aren't asking it to do anything.

A well-built one uses a user-space audio driver rather than a kernel extension, and can be removed completely by its own uninstaller.

Your options

• Music app EQ — free, built in, Music only, 10 fixed bands.
• Per-app equalizers — free where they exist, but only for that app.
• A system-wide equalizer — third-party, affects everything. The established options include eqMac (free and open source), Boom 3D, SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba, and EQBase, which is what we make. We've written honest comparisons with eqMac and Boom 3D, including where each of them is the better choice.

If your problem is specifically that one app is too loud next to another, rather than tone, see per-app volume control on a Mac.

Common questions

Can I EQ system audio without installing anything?

No. Without a virtual audio device there is no point in the chain where processing can happen, so every solution involves installing something.

Does a system-wide equalizer hurt audio quality?

It doesn't have to. A well-built one is bit-transparent when set flat, meaning samples pass through unchanged, and adds no latency to the direct signal. Not all of them are, and most don't tell you either way — so if this matters to you, look for a product that states it explicitly and lets you verify it.

Will it work with Bluetooth headphones and AirPods?

Yes. The processing happens before audio reaches the output device, so it works with any output your Mac supports: built-in speakers, USB, HDMI, AirPlay or Bluetooth.

Can I undo it?

Yes. These apps come with an uninstaller that removes the virtual device and restores your original output. Deleting the app on its own can leave the audio device behind, so use the uninstaller.

If you want to try one

EQBase is our take: a menu-bar equalizer for all system audio with a free tier that has no time limit, correction profiles for 8,600+ headphone models, zero added latency, and a bit-perfect signal path when everything is flat. It needs macOS 14 or later.

Download EQBase free