How to get a longer volume slider on the Mac

17 May 2020, 05:22

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The menu bar volume control on macOS, seen above, can be quite short. This can make precisely adjusting volume difficult, especially if you have Bluetooth speakers with their own volume settings.

If you have some kind of external playback hardware – like Bluetooth speakers, headphones, or AirPods – then there’s a little trick you can do to make the volume slider larger.

How do I make the volume control bigger on my Mac?
We can take advantage of a “feature” of macOS, which is that the volume slider pop-out window, is as wide as the name(s) of your playback hardware.

In other words, give your AirPods a longer name and the volume slider pop-out will be longer.

In simple terms, if you change your name of your AirPods from “Bob’s AirPods” to “Bob’s amazing wonderful AirPods”, then you’ll see a longer volume slider.

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Here’s how it’s done for AirPods or indeed any Bluetooth device. Remember that renaming your AirPods will rename them on all your Apple devices if you’re using Bluetooth.

  1. Ensure your AirPods are connected to your Mac. This is vital for these steps to work! In other words, pop them into your ears.
  2. Open System Preferences and click the Bluetooth icon.
  3. Find your AirPods in the list, and right-click them. Then select Rename from the menu that appears.
  4. You can now type a new name. Make it as long as possible! You can input any name up to 32 characters in length (including spaces).
  5. The changes will take effect immediately. Click the volume slider to see a new, larger/longer version!

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