Apple is officially bringing the Mac startup bell with macOS Big Sur, four years after removing it in an earlier version of the operating system.
Based on the social media posts from the developers running the first beta, it appears that the startup buzzer is also widely available on other models. It seems that users can toggle sound on and off as there is now a new option “Play sound on startup” in System Preferences.
Apple first scoffed at the return of the buzzer during its inaugural speech at WWDC 2020. While it didn’t actually confirm the fact, Apple’s macOS Big Sur feature page states that “the system sounds are brand new and even more so. pleasant to the ear, “and were created using fragments of the originals.
During Monday’s WWDC keynote, Apple’s vice president of human interface design Alan Dye said the new sounds are “familiar to Mac, but remastered and more refined.”
Although a software update in 2016 removed the startup buzzer, a post-macOS Catalina update actually added them under the hood, though it required a Terminal command to enable them.
.
