You press the volume keys and nothing happens. No overlay, no beep, no change. Here’s what’s going on and how to fix it in about a minute.
Why the keys go quiet
While Audiout owns your Mac’s sound output, macOS’s own volume keys stop doing anything — the system volume they normally control isn’t what you’re hearing anymore. So Audiout takes the keys over and points them at Main Audio, the master fader that sits above all your speakers. Press volume up, the whole house gets louder. That’s how it’s meant to work.
But taking over the keys needs a permission: Accessibility, which macOS requires for any app that listens to keyboard keys system-wide. Audiout asks for it in the Setup step called “Remote Control”. If that grant was never given, or was revoked later, the keys stay dead — macOS ignores them and Audiout isn’t allowed to catch them.
Audiout offers the grant once per launch. If you dismissed it earlier, it won’t nag again until the next launch, which is why the keys can sit dead without any visible complaint.
The fix
Two routes to the same place:
Through Audiout’s Setup:
- Open Settings › General and click “Run setup again…”.
- Find the “Remote Control” step and complete it. It walks you to the Accessibility grant.
Straight through System Settings:
- Open System Settings and go to the Accessibility permission list (under Privacy & Security).
- Find Audiout and switch it on. If it’s not listed, use the Setup route above so Audiout can request it properly.
Once granted, the keys work immediately — press volume up and Main Audio moves.
Checking it worked
Press a volume key and watch Audiout’s mixer: the Main Audio fader should move with it. These are the same keys macOS greys out once an AirPlay speaker is the output. It works the other way round too: turn the knob on a speaker itself and that speaker’s fader moves in Audiout. If the fader moves but a particular speaker doesn’t get louder, that’s a different topic — the speaker’s own fader is what sets its share of the volume.
If the keys are still dead after granting Accessibility, quit and reopen Audiout so it picks the permission up fresh, and check that the Setup window (Settings › General › “Run setup again…”) shows the “Remote Control” step as complete. Permissions that keep vanishing are covered in A permission got turned off.
Still stuck? Email support@audiout.app with your macOS version. All articles live at /support.