Bring back your Mac’s startup chime with this simple terminal command

Apple’s Mac startup chime became an iconic signature of the company’s computers over the years and then in late 2016, it was removed for all Macs going forward with the exception of the 2017 MacBook Air. In a fun development today, there’s a short terminal command that’s been discovered that will bring back your Mac’s startup chime.

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Back in 2016, there was a similar terminal command discovered to keep the startup chime, but Apple killed it not too long after.

Now it seems Apple has brought back the hidden option at some point with macOS Catalina. Today, Twitter user @chaysegr shared a video showing his MacBook Pro booting up with the iconic chime. He shared the terminal command that you can run to bring it back on your Mac:

sudo nvram StartupMute=%00

Type or copy and paste that command in Terminal then press return (enter your password if required). We verified that the command does indeed work on a couple of our machines here at 9to5Mac.

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Shortly after, @tempaccountnull discovered that “sudo nvram StartupMute=%01” will turn it back to the default of no chime.

For a fun look behind the scenes of the making and history of the Mac startup chime, check out this interview with the creator Jim Reekes.

What do you think? Are you excited to have the Mac chime back? Share your thoughts in the comments below?

WHAT THE HECK THIS WORKS????????????

Run sudo nvram StartupMute=%00@9to5mac @Appleinsider https://t.co/zAw0yCPwbA

— 🅳🆈🅻🅰🅽 (@DylanMcD8) February 21, 2020

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Thanks, Dylan!