“Play sound on startup” option does not exist in sound preferences

mackavy wrote:

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately that did not work for me. I also tried some suggestions from the attached link, but to no avail. It's really weird that Apple wouldn't make this an easy option to disable this annoying startup sound. Have they specifically removed this options from the latest OS versions?

In 2017 and newer macOS did not have the sound file for the chime anymore so it doesn’t work for them.

Apple brought back the start up chime after many complaints of it being AWOL ...

The latest version macOS Big Sur includes the option in System Preferences to turn on or off.

How to upgrade to macOS Big Sur w/tech specs

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201475

mackavy wrote:

See screenshot below. I'm using Catalina 10.15.7

Please tell me how to permanently disable that awful startup sound!

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/09b41570-cae1-4ac4-a502-575a09086749

With macOS Big Sur 11 or later, you can control whether your Mac plays this sound at startup, in System Preferences.

Turn the Mac startup sound on or off

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211996

If you want to disable the start-up chime you can try...

You can try from Terminal.app copy&paste

sudo nvram BootAudio=%00