How to turn off volume ducking in OS X 10.9?

By robin24, 25 October, 2013

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
Hi all! I've now installed 10.9 Mavericks on my Mac, and all looks good so far. However, I'm having one serious problem with the new OS: currently, it appears like when VO is speaking, the sounds coming from all other apps will play with reduced volume. For example, I noticed that when in a Skype call, the volume of the call will *always* duck when VO is talking, which I think is extremely annoying. Furthermore, sounds like for incoming mail are also affected, making them extremely hard to hear when they play while VO is speaking and without headphones. Is there any way I can turn this off and have everything play at the default volume? Thanks for any help! Robin

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By Katie P on Saturday, October 26, 2013 - 15:41

Hello, If you go into the Voiceover utility, find the Audio category and then, find the "Allow Audioducking" checkbox. Clear it, and the ducking should stop. I hope this helps.

For what it's worth it drove me nuts too. It does work right after you clear the checkbox.

By robin24 on Saturday, October 26, 2013 - 15:41

Hi, many thanks, that worked great! :-) It's great one can disable this feature, because I do think it really is a bit of a pain most of the time. However, I do think there may be some use cases for it - for example, when you're on one of those annoying websites that use Flash to play music all the time, since normally it gets really hard to hear VO speak with music playing on top. Robin