How to turn off or mute a Mac's boot sound chime?

I totally agree with you about the annoying sound- Apple is not user friendly- their platform controls everything, hides alot and they do not provide answers. It is hard to clean out old files and they have many ways to force using the cloud.

Then they just send you to community pages so they do not have to spend any resources responding to customer needs.

A user should be able to turn off the sound and find an answer direct from Apple.

The do have a Apple genius bar is some malls where you can get expert help.

Let us know if you find an answer

You do know that you responded to a one year old inactive thread?

they have many ways to force using the cloud.

I don't use "the cloud". I am not being forced to use it.

Let us know if you find an answer

The answer was already given.

Additionally, the sound serves a very important purpose: any time you need to use diagnostics, recovery, and the like, you must press a key right after that sound, so you would not be able to perform necessary troubleshooting or use recovery if you cannot hear the sound.

Apple is not user friendly

That is ridiculous. If you need assistance, please do ask by starting your own thread.

It is hard to clean out old files

Actually, it is not all that hard; if you have a problem with that, start your own thread and ask - someone will try to help you. I keep my hard drive neat, lean, and organized.

Hi, i solved this problem via terminal (i just dont like to use too many additional apps)

Temporarily mute the Mac startup sound

If you want to temporarily stop the Mac startup chime sound, just hold down the Mute button on your Mac keyboard, this will silence the boot sound for that particular system boot/reboot.

Note the mute key is going to be different on various Macs, sometimes it has been F3, F10, and on the newest Mac portables, it’s F9. The key looks like a speaker pointed sideways

(WHAT I DID) Permanently Mute the Mac Startup Sound with Terminal

With the Terminal app you can completely silence the startup sound and mute it so that it will completely quiet. Open the Terminal app (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and issue the following string:

sudo nvram SystemAudioVolume="%00"

Hit return and follow it up with the admin password to allow the adjustment, that is required by sudo. This quite literally disables the chime, until it has been undone at least.

You can restore the startup sound to its default by using the following command string:

sudo nvram -d SystemAudioVolume

A reboot is necessary for user to notice the change, of course.

http://osxdaily.com/2010/01/28/how-to-stop-the-mac-startup-sound/

Do you shut down your computer every night or even every time you finish a session. If so, it is an unnecessary practice. Not shutting down will limit the number of times you will be exposed to the chime and it is perfectly safe to work this way unless you have people around you that you dont want to have access to your machine. I only shut down when I am away for a few days.

Further, when you do have to shut down, if you volume down just BEFORE you actually shut down, it should restart at the same low level. Mine does.

As far as I know, Apple want you to have the chime reminder that all is well. I agree with that thinking, all too often people with no great experience will turn off the chime and forget. When a problem arises they have no warning.

I, too, have heard of a terminal command but I never use the terminal facility. A single space or dot out of place can wreak havoc.

From all I read, the usage of power is minimal when the machine is in sleep state, though I couldn't convert that into monetory savings ... probably pennies per month.

I think you should go to Systems Preferences > Energy saver and jiggle that until you find a combination that suits. Then use the sleep function and remember to turn down the sound if you do shut down. Inelegant it may be, but it is practical.

Plug in a set of headphones or a just a mini-jack extension cable. The sound will go to the headphones, or to nothing at all.

There are so few complaining because we never shut down and we don't keep a desktop Mac in a room where people sleep.

Also, my volume is very low all the time. I have no need for it to be above one or two ticks.

I never at any time said mute it. I said turn the volume down .. in line with what Barney has now joined us to suggest say 10% of full.

Duculetu,

I feel your pain. Hate that chime. I've tried a number of solutions. Just today, I updated my Cocktailapp, which now supports El Capitan. It has (among other features and capabilities) a check box to silence the start up sound. And yes, it works. Cocktail is relatively pricey (up to $19 now for a single user version). But it is a great maintenance app for for macs. It's certainly not worth that cost if you just use it to silence the start up sound. But if you use it the way it's meant, to clean out old files, delete localization files, etc, then you might find it's worth the cost. There's plenty of info out there to help you decide.

I've tried everything possible, the only thing that worked (and it only works with nothing plugged into the audio port) is running the script from: https://github.com/teored90/nobootsound

You don't to bring anything to the table to justify your need for silence; the chime is annoying plain and simple.

For a complete overview of the issue check out this link. The solution is about half way down the page (logging in to terminal et. al.) but the entire article is a good read:

http://www.macissues.com/2015/03/13/how-to-silence-your-macs-startup-sound/

Cheers

startninja is the app i use for that. that chime sound is awful if the kids are a sleep