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Revive the startup chime on your Mac

By The Oliver Kennett, 22 February, 2020

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hi,

After 2016 the iconic startup chime was lost to us. For most it wasn't a big problem, for those of us who rely on audio queues it was a more substantial loss. A recent article outlines a way of turning it back on. It notes that it works for the moment but things, as with any update, can change. Copying from the article in question:

How to turn your Mac startup chime on
  • Open the Applications folder
  • Open the Utilities folder
  • Launch the Terminal application
  • Enter sudo nvram StartupMute=%00 in the terminal, and hit return

If you want to remove the chime after re-activating it, use the command sudo nvram StartupMute=%01 in terminal.

Note: I have done this on my 2018 MacBook Air and it works though the chime is very quiet and, as yet, I've not found a way of turning it up though I do believe it should be linked to what ever volume your internal speakers are set to on shutdown. Any experiences well received.

Further note: Though this is highly unlikely to brick your computer or mute your sound card, I advise caution when ever tinkering with anything in the back end and any such tinkering is done at your own risk.

Happy chiming...

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Comments

This works on my 2019 Air

By Bryan Jones

3 years 9 months ago

Club AppleVis Member

Thank you for posting this! It works on my 2019 Air running 10.15.3..

Thank you

By Soren Holmgren (Denmark)

3 years 9 months ago

Thank you for sharing Oliver. I was missing this and now it works on my iMac 2015 and my MacBook Pro 2018.

This also worked for me

By David Standen

3 years 9 months ago

This also worked for me. Thank you for sharing this with us.

I wonder if this will still

By Austin Nix

3 years 9 months ago

I wonder if this will still work when updating the OS, or if I'll have to change it again? I ask since I used to use a bootcamp partition, and Every! Single! Time I updated Mac OS I had to change the startup disk back to Windows since that's what I was mainly using that computer for.

It doesn’t work…

By Andrea Priola

3 years 9 months ago

I just tried with my 2018 MacBook Air and it doesn’t work at all. I even restarted the system a second time, but nothing, unfortunately. I don’t know if it is a problem of sounds volume, because I always keep it quite high to be sure I can hear voiceover for example when I have to switch it on at university. I can only hear the hiss of the CPU

I did it!!!

By Beth Taurasi

3 years 9 months ago

I love this little trick. I actually did it in terminal and it worked. It really worked, and I'm amazed. I did this on a Mac mini 2018 with Catalina. I love having a startup chime as I don't have a screen ... yet.

I did it!!!

By Andrea Priola

3 years 9 months ago

Now it works, maybe I typed something wrong last time I tried it. Thanks a lot!!!

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