how do I change alert sounds for calendar events in Mavericks?

Hi,

here is a solution that is working for me in 10.9.5 (thanks to Wakko from http://iszene.com/thread-165772-post-1927711.html#pid1927711)

1. (Make TimeMachine backup)
2. Quit calendars
3. Go to ~/Library/Calendars. Here, for each calendar there is a folder with its UUID (i. e. 9C36543C-8BA1-4264-8E3F-C1BB9FB207BE.calendar). To find out what calendar it is referring to open info.plist within it. Chose the calendar's folder you want to change the alarm sound for. It should also be containging the folder /LocalDefaultAlarms with the two files EventAllDayAlarms.icsalarm and EventTimedAlarms.icsalarm. If it does not open calendars and create a test event in that calendar. Go to 2.
4. Open EventAllDayAlarms.icsalarm and EventTimedAlarms.icsalarm. Find the line ATTACH;VALUE=URI:basso and change basso to the sound you like. I had to place the sound file in /System/Library/Sounds.
5. (By the way: If you want to change the default hour for alerts for all day events, change TRIGGER:-PT15H accordingly. PT stands for pacific time, -PT15H means 9 AM (15 hours before beginning of the day).)
6. Reboot

EventAllDayAlarms.icsalarm and EventTimedAlarms.icsalarm are re-created and reset to basso each time calendar prefs are saved. So, in order to prevent overwriting your manual settings accidentally, set them to read only.

Good luck!

Florian

I forgot:

4a. Delete

~/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache

~/Library/Calendar Cache-shm and

~/Library/Calendar Cache-wal

I have a more difficult problem than just changing the sound of the default alert. The underlying problem is that an alert of type "Message with sound" does not get sync-ed to Google Calendar, so my Android phone does not see them. I can create new calendar entries on the phone or on the website, and every device gets the event with its alert/notification; when I create a new entry on my Mac, all devices get the event, but only the Mac gets the alert.😟

I want to change the default alert type from "message with sound" to "message" -- then it will sync with Google calendar and my android phone. I can do that manually, but I REALLY want it to be the default.

Any ideas?

In $HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist there is PersistentMenu-LastUsedAlarms which has 4 items, and each has an AlarmParameterKey set to "Basso", and an AlarmTypeKey set to 3. Elsewhere people said changing this will change the default alert. But "Message with sound" is the second item in the Custom Alarm type drop-down, not the third.

(And why on Mavericks does the app named "Calendar" have a plist named "iCal"? -- historical artifacts like that drive people crazy!)

Thanks - this solved my issue as well. Much appreciated.