You know how the iPhone and iPad plays a little chime when you plug it in? The new MacBook also does that. But sadly, the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro remain completely silent when they connect to juice — which can make it hard to tell when you’ve accidentally knocked the MagSafe loose.
If you’ve got a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, though, it’s easy to hack in the new MacBook’s power-charging sound. Here’s how.
This tip comes from the always excellent OS X Daily, which notes that enabling a power chime sound effect when plugging in a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is as easy as unplugging your device, loading up the Terminal app, and pasting this in:
defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool true; open /System/Library/CoreServices/PowerChime.app &
Plug your MacBook Pro or Air back in and voila! There’s the chime.
As for turning it back off again if you don’t like it, just turn the “true” in the above command to “false.”
If you need more details, head over to OS X Daily for the full run-through.
Source: OS X Daily
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
20 responses to “How to hack the new MacBook’s power chime onto the MacBook Air and Pro”
Hey – do you realize that the widget you use to mess with the system Copy command actually prevents someone from copying that command above? That’s very annoying.
defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool true; open /System/Library/CoreServices/PowerChime.app &
Seriously, and this shit makes me not trust sites that do it.
Why do web browsers even allow certain sites to disable or modify the Copy command? That’s very user-unfriendly. Firefox seems to be better about this than Safari, though.
I think it is a bad idea in general, just a bad implementation here.
Thanks, that’s a neat one! Instant gratification…
And Raymond, I didn’t have a problem copy/pasting, not sure why you had a problem.
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How exactly does this help tell you that you’ve knocked it out? It doesn’t play anything when it’s unplugged… Still a nice touch though.
Look down to the left of your pinky and see if there’s a little light on the power cable. I dunno.
There are times when my MagSafe gets bumped, but reconnects itself a second or two later. Presumably the chime would let you know when that has happened (but not when it’s been knocked out permanently). Is that what you’re getting at, John Brownlee?
For those of you who can’t read the command, it’s
defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool true; open /System/Library/CoreServices/PowerChime.app &
Also, this can be changed to play whatever sound you want!
Navigate to Macintosh HD/System/Library/CoreServices
Right-click on PowerChime.app, then click Show Package Contents
Navigate into Contents/Resources
Rename connect_power.aif to connect_power_old.aif
Then rename the AIFF sound file you want to use to connect_power.aif, and add it into the folder.
Restart. That’s all!
This is great!! But Ted, could you please tell me how to turn the sound off?! I tried changing the word ‘true’ to ‘false’, but it didn’t work. Now I’m stuck with this sound and I don’t really like it… :-( Thank you!
defaults write com.apple.PowerChime ChimeOnAllHardware -bool false;killall PowerChime
I have 132 items in System/Library/CoreServices, but “PowerChime.app” ain’t one.
(Running Yosemite on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. (With the glorious 17″ display. I don’t think the little retina displays are an improvement over this thing.))
Does the power chime trick only work on a new MacBook Pro? If so, the article failed to mention that.
Though this is very interesting, when I decided that I didn’t want the sound chanting the word ‘true’ to ‘false’ didn’t really solve anything! Anyone knows how to turn the sound off?! Thanks.
You need to also do a killall PowerChime to turn it on. The false will keep from restarting it next time.
Does anyone have a recording/video of the chime?
What’d you need it for? You can get to the actual audio file by navigating to /System/Library/CoreServices/PowerChime.app/Contents/Resources and finding the “connect_power.aif” file. Use that as you wish…
I would guess that he is either not running Yosemite (I am running Mavericks), or he is running a Windows machine and just wants to hear the sound to add it to the Windows sounds.
Is there a way to emulate this functionality in Mavericks?
IS there a way to add a Disconnect_Power if???
I have 2 files id like to use, one for power on and one for power off