OS X : Disable Mac Startup Sound

Contributor Icon Contributed by risherz Date Icon December 31, 2007  
Tag Icon Tagged: Apple Mac

Every time you turn on your mac it makes a boot up chime, which has been with OS X since OS 9. Want to stop that “annoying” sound that your mac makes during boot up? Here are a couple of ways to help you do just that.


The first option is to manually stop the sound that your Mac makes simply by pressing the mute key every time you wish to shutdown or restart your mac. Then once your computer restarts, increase the sound back to normal. This way you only have to temporarily mute the sound when you find it to be distracting (for places like the library or a room filled with “mac haters”). The only downside to this is that you’ll have to preplan the “silent start-up” and do it every time if you hate the start up chime.

The second solution is a much more automated one. First get the Startup Sound PrefPane from Arcana labs. After you download it, install it. Then go to Preferences > Startup Sound and check the Mute checkbox. Make sure turn on start up volume control is checked as well.

Mac Startup Sound Prefpane

It might not start muting the startup sound the very first time to restart the computer, so I recommend doing a restart after you mute it just to make sure.

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  • petitefute
    Thank you so much you are a life saver, as I live in my Unis silent library that noise is the embarrassing bane of my life, and thankfully it's gone.
  • jeff5267
    Thank you for creating this PrefPane... The start up chime was driving me nuts... Once I installed it and did a restart the sound was no longer there... Keep up the good work your doing...
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