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How Do I Change the Alert Sound for Calendar and Reminders?

I would like to change the default alert sound for my calendar and reminder notifications.
I have already set a custom system alert sound, but for calendar and reminders nothing has changed.
I just do not find a way, and that very nice , soft alert just does not do the job for me.
Could you please help out here?

Because I need a much more aggressive alert for my calendar events and reminders.
—–
Szabolcs Kovats

Comments: 10 Responses to “How Do I Change the Alert Sound for Calendar and Reminders?”

    4 years ago

    All you can change is the alert sound, as it sounds like you have. Both Reminders and Calendar don't really play a sound -- they trigger a notification. And that notification has a sound, or not, depending on your settings in System Preferences, Notifications. You can customize how notifications appear for each app there, but there is no setting for a custom sound. If you need to make the notifications for these "more aggressive" then I would suggest switching them to "Alerts" style with all checkboxes on.

    Szabolcs Kovats
    4 years ago

    Hi Gary,

    Should it be the system alert sound, is it the same as the notification sound?
    The sound played by Calendar is none of which I have under System settings/Sound/soundeffekts.

    4 years ago

    Szabolcs: I guess not then. But either way there is no setting to change the sound.

    Szabolcs Kovats
    4 years ago

    Hi Gary,

    Thank's for your answers. It is really disappointing after all I saw in Apple software, great feature and navigation design everywhere... At the same time one cannot configure the notification sounds.
    I guess I could script "aggressive" Alerts, but I cannot do it yet.
    It is definitely something to add.

    Tom Gonser
    3 years ago

    Neither calendar nor reminders includes any sort of "sound" notification on my iMac, my iPhone, or my Apple watch. It certainly would be useful! Tom

    Jessica
    3 years ago

    basically so like i have like the same exact problem like yea

    Rich
    3 years ago

    Unfortunately, the ability to customize the most mundane things on Mac, Linux, and even Windows is beyond the comprehension of our greatest technology leaders. Thus we have to find workarounds like the following...in your event in your Mac Calendar, Click on alert: , at the bottom of the pop-up menu click Custom, in the pop-up window click on the top available option and select "Open file", click on the next selection box down and select "other", find and select your sound file.

    Chris Williams
    3 years ago

    Previous versions of macOS, OS X and Mac OS used to allow the user to select any .aiff file for playback through the “Message with sound” drop-down menu. Each alert could have its own individual sound associated with it, so that (for example) “walk dog” could be accompanied by the sound of a dog barking.

    Another example of Apple reducing rather than augmenting user features and flexibility. Whatever happened to the original Apple, that fought for a better user experience?

    Kat
    3 years ago

    Thank you @Rich! You were a lifesaver! That sound always made me jump! :D

    bookworm3451
    3 years ago

    Thanks @Rich I could not figure out why I was not getting all my custom alerts in my new MacBook. @Chris I am so depressed at the thought of future Macs being more and more what the powers that be think my workflow should be like instead of what actually works for me. I'm on my 6th Mac and I think my favorite was 3 Macs ago.

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