I use Element for messaging, and unfortunately it has ear rape kind of notification sound. I want to decrease the volume of notification to make it less horrible, but I haven't found the way in OS settings, or in app settings.
Of course it would be great to have separate controls for all sounds, but that's probably different issue and notifications are processed alternatively.
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 15.7
Unfortunately there’s no built-in way in macOS Sonoma to set the volume of notifications per app. The system allows you to turn notification sounds on or off for each app, but not to adjust their relative volume
Go to System Settings → Notifications → choose the app (e.g., Element) → you have options like “Play sound for notifications” (on/off) and alert style (banners/alerts/none)
You can also adjust overall alert/sound-effects volume via System Settings → Sound → Sound Effects → Alert volume. This changes the global “alert” sound volume (which is used for system alerts) but not each app’s notification volume.
So: you could turn off the notification sound for Element and rely on visual alerts only, or mute/disable the sound for that app as a quick fix
Unfortunately there’s no built-in way in macOS Sonoma to set the volume of notifications per app. The system allows you to turn notification sounds on or off for each app, but not to adjust their relative volume
Go to System Settings → Notifications → choose the app (e.g., Element) → you have options like “Play sound for notifications” (on/off) and alert style (banners/alerts/none)
You can also adjust overall alert/sound-effects volume via System Settings → Sound → Sound Effects → Alert volume. This changes the global “alert” sound volume (which is used for system alerts) but not each app’s notification volume.
So: you could turn off the notification sound for Element and rely on visual alerts only, or mute/disable the sound for that app as a quick fix
As Owl-53 said, there are no separate volume controls for apps in macOS.
You may want to test out a third party free software that provides just that - called "Background Music".
It's free. I have used it briefly in the past, and it seemed to work as advertised. I have not used it extensively.
Make separate notification volume controls for apps
