Any way to disable Facetime ducking all other audio?

By Nico, 3 March, 2025

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi,
Whenever I join a Facetime call on my mac, all other audio, from all output devices, that is neither Voiceover nor the call itself gets ducked around 20 DB give-or-take, and I'd like to disable that feature. I couldn't find any such option in System Settings, and googling for a solution gave me nothing.
Has anyone else run into this issue? If you have, have you found any way to disable this feature, or is it just hardcoded into the system?
Thanks!

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Comments

By TheBlindGuy07 on Monday, March 3, 2025 - 02:58

I didn't realise before reading this thread how big of an issue this thing actually is. I get now that it's the reason of the remote machine voiceover being so low when I was controlling a friend's mac.

By Levi Gobin on Monday, March 3, 2025 - 02:58

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

I have not used audio hijack in a very long time, but years ago, when I would use it with a 2014 MacBook Air, when a session was running, (in this case it was acting as a systemwide EQ), activating Siri would not stop all sounds from macOS like it usually would.
If I remember correctly, this also would apply to FaceTime.
I know Apple Silicon are different than Intel ones, but thought I would share.