The iPhone and iPad have made a cute little chime noise when plugged it into charge since their inception, but the Mac has no such noise as it uses the MagSafe light indicators to show charging status. This changed with the new 12-inch Retina MacBook which doesn’t have MagSafe so it uses the iOS chime sound to indicate charging. By default, this noise is simply disabled for other Macs …
However, there is a way to change it so that any Mac laptop can make the chime by following a couple of easy steps using Terminal.
- Open Terminal.
- Type (or copy and paste) the following command into the Terminal console.
defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool true; open /System/Library/CoreServices/PowerChime.app
Now, restart your Mac and let your power deplete down from 100%. Now, when you plug it in, you’ll hear the same iconic iOS chime sound. Cute.
The ‘hack’ was highlighted on Reddit over the weekend but has existed ever since OS 10.10.3 when the 12inch Retina MacBook was introduced. It also works on the El Capitan betas. If you change your mind and don’t want it anymore, you can simply turn it off again with the following Terminal command:
defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool false; open /System/Library/CoreServices/PowerChime.app
Now all your Macs can sound like your iOS devices when they charge! Note that this tip is obviously undocumented and future OS X updates may stop this from working. For now though, it’s been tested on OS X Yosemite 10.10.3 and later as well as the current OS X El Capitan beta.
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Why was it necessary for the retina MB to have this chime? Because USB-C doesn’t have an indicator light?
Exactly.
Restart not needed
Nice. However I want the opposite – turn that stupid sound off on iOS. Anybody know how?
This is pretty cute trick, nice find
Maybe change “MacBook” in title to “Mac” or “MacBook Pro” because the MacBook already chimes when plugged in.
Great :) are there any other tricks we should know?
Thanks, this is pretty cool — funny how the USB-C doesn’t have a light to indicate it’s charging, I think that’s kind of dumb. Now my rMBP has both light and sound :)
Is there a command to get a chime when charging cable disconnect/stop charging?
Works on my Mac Mini
How can it work on the mac mini???? There’s no battery!
Funny thing is I’ve never performed this hack and my MBP started making this chime around the time I updated to 10.10.5. I don’t recall when so I can say this is why it started happening.
Is there any way to make this a little louder?
I’ve got a middle 2007 – 13″ – MacBook running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5.
I’ve tried to run that command on Terminal but it didn’t work.
Does this mean I can’t make my MacBook to chime?
Thank you for your help.