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Make your MacBook chime like an iPhone when you plug it in to charge

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.

  1. Open Terminal.
  2. 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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Comments

  1. Why was it necessary for the retina MB to have this chime? Because USB-C doesn’t have an indicator light?

  2. argyleo - 9 years ago

    Restart not needed

  3. fberzau - 9 years ago

    Nice. However I want the opposite – turn that stupid sound off on iOS. Anybody know how?

  4. orphicpixel - 9 years ago

    This is pretty cute trick, nice find

  5. Maybe change “MacBook” in title to “Mac” or “MacBook Pro” because the MacBook already chimes when plugged in.

  6. Arash Afjari (@arash_uk) - 9 years ago

    Great :) are there any other tricks we should know?

  7. srgmac - 9 years ago

    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 :)

  8. Is there a command to get a chime when charging cable disconnect/stop charging?

  9. fishbert (@fishbert) - 9 years ago

    Works on my Mac Mini

  10. crichton007 - 9 years ago

    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.

  11. prince3o - 8 years ago

    Is there any way to make this a little louder?

  12. 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.

Author

Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.