How to stop your Mac from making the chiming noise at startup
October 14, 2008 by Ross McKillop
One of my (few) gripes with my Mac is the seriously annoying “chime” that it makes every time it boots. It doesn’t matter if my headphones are plugged in or not - that thing will sing out, loudly. It’s particularly annoying if I’m in a library or quiet coffee shop. Using the very small and very helpful utility Psst that noise is a thing of the past.
Something that is absolutely worth noting up front - Psst will not work on every Mac. The developer knows this, and makes it as clear as possible that it may not work for you. There’s a compatibility list you can check, but I didn’t see my Mac (1st gen MacBook Pro running 10.5.5) listed, and it worked perfectly for me. If the chime annoys you as much as it does me, here’s a quick overview of how to install and setup Psst.
- First up, download Psst. Open the .dmg file and drag Psst to your Applications folder
- Open your Applications folder, locate the Psst sub-folder, and double-click Psst.app. When the very small Psst window opens, click the Start Psst button.
- Close your open Applications, and restart your Mac. If you don’t hear the chime when it boots, Psst works for you! If you do hear the chime, Psst doesn’t work, and you might as well uninstall it. To do so, re-launch it, click the Stop Psst button, exit Psst and drag the entire Psst folder to your Trash. If you don’t click the Stop Psst button before you drag the folder to the trash, you’ll get an error message.
- Assuming it does work, there’s nothing more you need to do - you’ll never hear that startup chime again as long as you leave Psst installed. There is one thing you can do to help the developer out though, and that’s to let him know that it works on your Mac. To do that, re-launch Psst. When it starts this time, a little window will appear asking you to submit your setup to the list of known working configurations. Click the Click to close button.
- Place a check in the box labeled Did Psst Work? and then click Submit. Your browser will open and the known configurations page will load. I’m not entirely sure that the submission process does actually work (right now) - as I didn’t see my specific info listed after I refreshed the page, but it’s worth doing just in case the dev updates the page.
this is sweet.
but i thought that if your headphones were plugged in it wouldn’t chime?
oh well. i’m too lazy to try it. either way this helps since i go to school and starting up is annoying.
You can also disable the Mac startup sound by simply holding down the mute button while pressing the power button. Keep the Mute button held down until after the startup sound would have normally played.