The Loud Awakening
For decades, Apple’s Mac computers have featured a signature “boot chime”—a loud, resonant synthetic chord that plays loudly through the internal speakers the moment the machine powers on. While iconic and historically useful as a hardware diagnostic indicator, it can be incredibly disruptive in modern settings. If you are powering on your MacBook in a quiet library, a crowded lecture hall, or a shared bedroom late at night, that unavoidable, booming chord immediately draws unwanted attention and can disturb those around you, regardless of what you had your system volume set to before shutting down.
Silencing the Startup Chord
To ensure your Mac powers up completely silently and respects the quietness of your environment, you can easily disable the startup sound directly through the standard system configuration.
Click the Apple logo located in the very top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings from the dropdown menu. In the left-hand navigation sidebar, scroll down and click on Sound. In the main right-hand panel, look near the top for the section labelled “Sound Effects.” You will see a specific toggle switch labelled Play sound on startup. Simply click this toggle to turn it Off. The change is saved instantly. You can now confidently power down or restart your Mac in the middle of a silent lecture hall, knowing that the next time it boots up, it will do so without making a single noise.