After a fresh installation of Mac OS X Lion the startup sound (chime) was extremely loud. Every morning i was near a cardiac infarction.

There are some tools to mute it, but they are currently (September 11, 2011) not compatible with Lion or they do not work with every hardware. The first one is the StartupSound.prefPane from Arcana Research. The other one is Psst from Satsumac. A other solution with custom scripts and hooks is too low level for a Mac user.

The startup sound is using the internal speaker of my iMac. Let's turn that output volume down:

1. Open the system preferences and select "Sound" ("Ton" in german)


2. Select the "Output" tab ("Ausgabe" in german)


3. Curious, only my "Headphones" ("Kopfhörer" in german) are listed. But i want to change the volume of the internal speakers?

4. Solution: Unplug your "Headphones" from your Mac and the list of ALL devices gets updated immediately. Now the "Internal Speakers" ("Interne Lautsprecher" in german) are visible and you can adjust the volume of them.


5. Plug your headphones

=> Try it with a reboot. Silence!!!

Tags: Lion, Startup Sound, Mac, OS X, Chime