How to silence UI sound effects on a Mac

The trash thud, the screenshot click, the little beep when you press the volume keys — macOS layers in a lot of auditory feedback that made sense in 1999 and mostly just gets in the way now. Here's how to turn them off, selectively or all at once.

Silence all UI sounds in System Settings

One checkbox handles most of it. Open System Settings → Sound and untick Play user interface sound effects.

This silences:

• The trash empty thud
• The drag-to-trash swoosh
• The screenshot camera shutter click
• Various other UI feedback sounds across macOS

The change takes effect immediately — no restart needed. To reverse it, tick the checkbox back on.

Silence the volume feedback beep

The volume beep is a separate toggle from the general UI sounds. In System Settings → Sound, look for Play feedback when volume is changed and untick it. The beeps on your volume-up and volume-down keys go silent.

This one is independent — you can silence volume feedback while keeping other UI sounds, or vice versa. Tick it back on any time to restore the beeps.

About the screenshot sound

The camera shutter plays when you take a screenshot with ⌘ Shift 3, ⌘ Shift 4, or ⌘ Shift 5. It's governed by the Play user interface sound effects toggle above — turning that off silences the shutter too.

If you want to keep other UI sounds but kill only the screenshot sound, there's a workaround: the shutter is suppressed when audio output is routed to headphones on some Mac models. But the more reliable path is to turn off UI sounds entirely if the shutter is your main complaint.

The Terminal way

If you prefer the command line, or want to script this as part of a Mac setup:

# silence UI sound effects
defaults write com.apple.systemsound "com.apple.sound.uiaudio.enabled" -int 0

After running this, log out and back in (or kill and relaunch SystemUIServer) for the change to take effect:

# restart the system UI process to apply the change
killall SystemUIServer

To restore UI sounds:

# re-enable UI sound effects
defaults write com.apple.systemsound "com.apple.sound.uiaudio.enabled" -int 1
killall SystemUIServer

Silence the startup chime

Macs with a T2 chip (Intel-era, roughly 2018–2020) and some earlier models play a chime when they boot. If you have one:

1. Open System Settings → Sound.
2. Untick Play sound on startup.

Apple silicon Macs (M1 and later) don't have a startup chime by default, so this option may not appear. If you're on a newer Mac and don't see the option, you're already chime-free.