Paul Morris·

Enable Iconic Mac Startup Chime On Your MacBook, iMac, Mac mini, Here’s How

If you are missing Mac’s iconic startup chime and are still utterly perplexed why it was removed by Apple, then this simple Terminal command may bring you some joy. One single line, entered in Mac’s Terminal app, will immediately bring back the iconic chime.

For one reason or another, Apple decided that late-2016 would be a good time to inexcusably kill the startup chime that pinged with Mac computers started up.

It may have been a very small part of the Mac and macOS experience but it was a sound that was immediately recognizable and was almost baked into Mac tradition. And then, just like that, it was gone, except, bizarrely, on the 2017 MacBook Air.

Now, as quickly as it was removed, you can bring it back by using this very simple command in the Terminal app as discovered by one Twitter user:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%00

It’s that simple! Really. Copy and paste that command into the Terminal app. Because the actual command is prefixed by the ‘sudo’ command, Terminal will likely ask you for your password in order to continue with the privileges necessary to make the change. Once verified, your Mac should be back to its traditional self with the startup chime echoing around your room whenever it starts up.

Additionally, if you just want to experiment and then immediately turn it back off, then the following command has been proven by Twitter user @tempaccountnull to revert that change and once again remove the chime:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%01

This is a very small change and not one that is going to offer you any functionality but Apple should have never messed with the chime that we knew and loved so it’s good that it can be brought back with just a simple command. Saying that, Apple has also killed a similar command in the past but seems to have reverted with Catalina – once again, for reasons only known to itself – so there is a very real possibility that this command could disappear again in the future.

So, with that in mind, get it whilst it’s hot and bring back that iconic Mac chime, right now.

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