#Power chime big sur mac

I know about the thousands of Mac users who were begging Apple for simple control of the startup chime, during the period of roughly 2005 – 2015, because I read through their messages on Apple’s (and others) websites.

#Power chime big sur software

So a different choice I’d prefer is some way to *change* the startup tone to something shorter, rather than simply a play/mute option (but that might somewhat defeat its purpose as a hardwired audible indicator of an ‘all-clear’ status, independent of any software that then needs to load). (I also remember a video, years ago, where a number of Macs all started up at the same time in a library somewhere, showing how intrusive that sound could be under the wrong circumstances.)

I guess I got tired of hearing the Mac’s longer startup tone because I’ve worked in labs with dozens of machines throughout the years, and to me hearing the startup tone was synonymous with a forced restart or other disruptive activity that needed to be dealt with. Then there was the more minimalist guitar chord of the early Power PCs, and other more obscure startup tones, as documented on YouTube, etc.īut the tone I liked best, because it performed its job but stayed out of the way, was the quick ‘pip’ noise of the NeXT Machines (similar to the ‘pop’ sound effect in System Preferences).

Then the Quadra came out with its somewhat pompous ‘chord’ that we all know today, made all the more majestic through an improved speaker.

I’ve owned Macs since the original SE, and remember its tinny-yet-friendly startup ‘chime’ (as opposed to the cold electronic beep of PCs of that era). (Thanks to for pointing out that the BootAudio parameter has inverse logic to StartupMute.) If you want to be able to change the volume of the chime easily on models with headphone sockets, connect to an external audio system and use its main volume control, setting it low before shutting down or restarting, for example. If you have a whole roomful of Macs, it’s probably better to turn the chime off in the NVRAM, but in the past some sysadmins resorted to gluing audio jacks into headphone sockets to stop users from enabling the startup chime. That should trick your Mac into thinking that headphones are connected, and mute its internal speakers. The easiest way to mute the chime when you need to is to put a blank audio jack plug into the headphone socket, where your Mac has such a socket. Thank you to Michael Bach (comment below) for reminding me to point that out, although I can’t think why anyone would ever want to do it 🙂 To turn off the startup chime, open Terminal and type You should now hear that warm, reassuring chord every time your Mac starts up, until you next reset your NVRAM, after which you’ll need to repeat the process of turning it back on. Then close Terminal, and try restarting your Mac. You’ll be prompted for your admin user password, which you should type in and press Return again. To turn on your missing startup chime, open Terminal and type This sets the StartupMute parameter instead.

#Power chime big sur pro

Thanks to for discovering the new secret way to enable this, which works even with the iMac Pro and MacBook Pro 2019 16-inch. Although once a plague in labs and classrooms, there’s something deeply emotive about that chord.įor some time, this could be re-enabled on muted models by setting the BootAudio parameter to 01, but that stopped working in models released from about 2017. One feature that many users miss on more recent Mac models is the startup chime.