How do you silence the startup chime on a Mac?

Question

What tools or techniques are available for silencing the start up chime on a Mac? I know this can be accomplished by muting the sound before shutdown, but I was hoping that a solution existed that didn't require me to, you know, remember to do anything.

Answer 1

Check out the StarupSound prefpane. It allows you to control the volume of and mute the chime.

Note: I have not used its on leopard yet, so I'm not sure if it works. But I can confirm it works in 10.4

Edit: I forgot to mention that you could just hold the mute button on you're keyboard when you hit the power button to disable the sound for that boot.

Answer 2

This looks like what you want:

StartupSound.prefPane

It adds a pref pane that you can use to disable the startup sound.

Answer 3

I use a System Preferences plugin called StartupSound.prefPane . Google around for it. You can set the volume.

Answer 4

Just hold down the mute button during initial boot time. This mutes the startup chime as well.

Answer 5

I just keep a headphone jack adapter plugged in when I'm in public places, so the volume is effectively muted and there's no disturbance.

Answer 6

On some older machines plugging in headphones works to disable the startup sound. This doesn't seem to work on my MacPro or my unibody MacBookPro 15".