When a user comes into contact with any device, one of the most important ways that the device has to warn him that something is not working quite right or that he is performing an action that he should not is through sound, so today we want to talk about them of the sounds that the Mac emits and how you can configure them.
What are the warning sounds for on the Mac?
Surely you have heard on numerous occasions the sound that the Mac makes when you are trying to perform an action that it does not allow you.
Well, that’s exactly what the warning sounds or alert sounds emitted by the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac or any Apple computer are for.
Its main function is to warn and alert the user that there is something they are trying to do but cannot be carried out, in this way the user can recognize the error and solve it.
Way to Customize the Sounds of Your Mac Computer
Perhaps if you are reading this article you know at this moment that that sound that your Mac emits to warn you that you are trying to do an action that is not possible to carry out is possible to change it and personalized to some extent, or perhaps you already knew this but not you had stopped to try to carry out this customization process.
In Macs, be it the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, or any Apple computer, the alert sound is customizable, in fact, Apple gives you up to 14 different sounds to choose from, with some quite funny.
If you want to change the alert sound that your Mac plays, you just have to go to System Preferences, click on sound and scroll to the Sound Effects tab, where you can choose between the following options.
- Basso.
- Blow.
- Bottle.
- Frog.
- Funk.
- Glass.
- Hero.
- Morse.
- Ping.
- Pop.
- Purr.
- Sosumi.
- Submarine.
- Tink.
Once you have chosen the sound that you like the most so that the Mac will alert you to that action that you are trying to perform but cannot, you can also choose options that have to do with the emission of this sound.
The first one is the device through which you want these sound effects to be played. In case you have a monitor connected to the Mac, you can choose between both, if you only have the Mac, as the sound will be reproduced through it.
Of course, you can also configure the volume at which these effects will be played and if you want to reproduce the sounds of the user interface.
Related to the volume, on this same screen you can access that the Mac emits a sound every time you raise or lower the volume, and of course, you can also adjust the general volume of the Mac while choosing whether your Mac shows you or not the Volume setting.
The legendary sound of the Mac when booting
If we talk about system sounds, one of the mythical and longed for a while is the sound made by Macs when they turn on. In some recent Macs, this sound did not play, so if you want your Mac to make that characteristic sound, follow the steps below.
- Enter Terminal through Finder or Launchpad.
- Enter the command sudo nvram BootAudio =% 01 and simply by turning the computer back on, you should be able to hear the characteristic sound.
In case you want to disable this sound, you have to enter the following command: sudo nvram BootAudio =% 00
Improve accessibility with this feature
Apple is a company that thinks a lot about all its users and therefore there is also a way to fulfill the function of alerting the sounds for those people who suffer from hearing problems.
If you go to System Preferences, click on Accessibility and then click on Audio, there you will be able to activate or deactivate the box «Activate the flashing of the screen when emitting alert sounds», in this way you can also know, visually, what you are trying to perform an action that cannot be performed.