Turn off Mac interface sound effects

macOS narrates itself with little sounds — a click when you empty the Trash, a whoosh when you send mail, a camera shutter for screenshots, a soft thud when a drag won't drop. If those effects grate on you, one checkbox turns the whole set off, and it leaves your music, videos, and app audio completely untouched.

Turn them off in System Settings

1. Open System Settings from the Apple menu.
2. Click Sound in the sidebar.
3. Under Sound Effects, untick Play user interface sound effects.

That single switch governs the whole family of interface noises. Test it by emptying the Trash or pressing Shift-Cmd-3 for a screenshot — silence — then play a song and confirm audio still works normally. The setting sits in the same place on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

What actually goes quiet

The interface-effects switch covers the sounds macOS itself makes as you work:

• The crumple when you empty the Trash.
• The shutter when you take a screenshot.
• The whoosh when you send a message or move a file to the Trash.
• The soft thunk when a drag-and-drop is rejected.

What it doesn't touch is just as important: system alerts (the "beep" you can pick separately), notification sounds, and every bit of audio from apps — Music, Safari, video calls, games. This is purely the chrome of the operating system going silent, not your Mac going mute.

Do it from the Terminal

The same toggle lives behind one defaults key. Setting it to false turns interface sounds off:

# Turn off interface sound effects
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.sound.uiaudio.enabled -bool false
killall screencaptureui

# Undo — turn them back on
defaults write NSGlobalDomain com.apple.sound.uiaudio.enabled -bool true
killall screencaptureui

The killall screencaptureui line nudges the screenshot process to re-read the setting so the shutter goes quiet on your very next capture; the rest of the effects respond immediately. If a menu or app was already listening for the old value, logging out and back in guarantees every corner of the system is in sync.

Sounds this switch doesn't cover

Turning off interface effects is deliberately narrow, so a few noises carry on — each with its own control if you want it quieter too:

• The alert beep — the warning sound for errors and confirmations has its own Alert sound picker and Alert volume slider in the same Sound panel.
• Notification sounds — the chimes that accompany banners are set per app under Notifications, not here.
• The startup chime — the sound your Mac makes at boot is a separate setting entirely.
• App and media audio — Music, video, games, and calls are never touched by this switch.

Knowing the split saves frustration: if a sound you disliked is still playing after unticking interface effects, it belongs to one of these other layers, and you can silence just that one without undoing your change here.

Because each layer is separate, you can compose exactly the soundscape you want: interface effects off, a gentle alert tone kept for genuine warnings, notifications muted for the chatty apps and left on for the ones that matter. It takes only a few minutes spread across two Settings panels — Sound for the beep and effects, Notifications for the per-app chimes — but the result is a Mac that makes only the sounds you actually find useful, and stays quiet about everything else.

Kill the volume "pop" too

One nearby sound has its own switch: the tick you hear when you press the volume keys. If that one bugs you, see how to turn off the volume change feedback sound on Mac — it's a separate checkbox in the same Sound panel.