HeadSafe

Headphone Safety for macOS.

A tiny macOS menu bar app that sets a maximum volume limit when headphones or earphones are connected.

How it works

• Detects audio output device changes in real time via CoreAudio
• Wired headphones are automatically protected
• Bluetooth devices are classified using IOBluetooth (headset vs speaker)
• Built-in speakers and other accessories are always ignored
• You can manually override device classification if auto-detection gets it wrong

Build & Run

swift build
swift run

Install as an app

swift build -c release
mkdir -p HeadSafe.app/Contents/MacOS
cp .build/release/HeadSafe HeadSafe.app/Contents/MacOS/

Then move HeadSafe.app to /Applications and add it to Login Items to launch at startup.

Requirements

• macOS 14+
• Swift 6.0+