I would like to permanently reduce the volume of the Startup chime to be very low, just barely audible.
This is a 2020 iMac (iMac20,1) running macOS Catalina (10.15.7).
Thank you
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
You can disable the startup chime but only by entering a command in Terminal and entering your administrator password:
[Credit to Kurt Lang who provided this suggestion in a separate post]
sudo nvram StartupMute=%01
(You may want to copy and paste it to avoid typos)
First I got a prompt in the Terminal telling me Catalina needs to use the "zsh login shell"
So, I followed the instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208050 to change my default Login Shell to /bin/zsh.
After a Restart, I was able to run the command:
sudo nvram StartupMute=%01
... and that totally silenced the startup sound.
Is there any way to keep the startup sound - but at a very low volume? That is, are the only two options "on" or "off" - or is there some variation of the sudo command which will set the volume somewhere in between on and off?
You can visit the Sound Preference panel and set the audio to a barely audible level, or even mute it there. I do that, and I also phyically press the mute button on the Apple keyboard before I power off the iMac, as a loud power on noise before daylight is truly worse than an alarm clock.
That works, but unfortunately it depends on me remembering to do it. I am trying to find some process which is more reliable than my memory.
How do I reduce or disable startup sound on 2020 iMac running Catalina?
