The New macOS Big Sur System Alert Sounds and How To Keep the Old Sounds

There is a complete new set of alert sounds to choose from in System Preferences once you update to macOS Big Sur. These new sounds were created using the old ones. Also, learn how to save the old sounds now, so you can use them again in Big Sur.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let's look at the new sounds in macOS Big Sur. 
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So in addition to having lots of visual changes when you upgrade from Catalina to Big Sur there's also going to be some audio changes. The System Alert set which has been the same for years and years is going to change. There's going to be the same number of alert sounds to choose from but what Apple has done is taken the old alert sounds and completely redone them. They now sound a little bit more modern, a little more full, a little more able to take advantage of the great speakers and things that we use to listen to audio on our Mac.
They feel more 2020 than 1999. For instance here's a sound in macOS Catalina called Funk (plays sound). That sound is gone in macOS Big Sur with one called Funky (plays sound). So you can see Apple has updated the sounds. In fact they say on the site that they have taken samples from the original sounds and updated them using that. So they are going to sound familiar but in the same time new. So here's a comparison of all the sounds in Catalina and the equivalent sounds in Big Sur. I really like how Apple has been very playful with the names. Updating each of the names, except for one, to make them related but at the same time new.
Playing sounds listed on screen.
Now I love these new sounds but I know there are some people, that maybe just for consistency sake, are going to want to keep using the old alert sounds. In order to do that you need to have those. You can certainly use them but you're going to have to use them as custom sounds. Grab those from macOS Catalina now before you upgrade to Big Sur in the Fall. The way to grab them is to go in the Finder and use the Go menu and to go to the computer level. Then select your hard drive, go down into System, and then Library. Then look here for the Sounds folder. 
When you find that, that's where all of these sounds are kept. So you're going to want to Save these to a location while you're still running Catalina. So go and create a New Finder window, maybe here in your Documents folder. Create a new folder and call it Catalina Alert Sounds. Then drag and drop the whole Sounds folder into that. It's going to make a copy of it and put it there. It won't move them because it can't change the files in the system.  So now you've got a copy of the Sounds folder here with all those sounds saved.
Now there's one sound that has the same name and you may want to differentiate these sounds from the new ones when you move to Big Sur. What I would do is select them all and then go to File, Rename and do Add Text and add some text like original with a space after it before the name and rename all of these. So now you've got unique names for these and it will group them all together in the list.
Then when you upgrade to Big Sur you won't actually be putting them in the System folder because you can't edit the System either in Catalina or Big Sur. What you're going to want to do is to go to the Go menu and hold the Option key down and go to Library. Then in there look for the Sounds folder. So this is the Sounds folder in your local User Library. I already have two custom sounds in here from a previous tutorial. But when the time comes and I'm in Big Sur I can take these, drag and drop them in here, and then I'll see the original sounds appear in System Preferences along side the New Alert sounds. Here you can see I have them all here in Catalina. They are just duplicates of the regular sounds in Catalina. But in Big Sur they would be different sounds because they would be the old Catalina sounds rather than the new Big Sur sounds.
Now here's an interesting thing you may not know. That one sound that doesn't change names is Sosumi. It literally means so sue me. There's even a wikipedia page about this sound which dates all the way back to 1991. You see before Apple there was Apple Core which was a music label owned by the Beatles. In a trademark dispute over the name Apple, Apple Computer as it was called at the time, agreed not to get into the music business. But when Macs got sophisticated enough to actually run music and sound software then Apple Core sued Apple because Apple was kind of getting into the music business. This led to an agreement between the two companies that then allowed Apple to really get into the music business with iTunes and the iPod later on. The sound is called sosumi because it's kind of a musical alert tone.

Comments: 7 Responses to “The New macOS Big Sur System Alert Sounds and How To Keep the Old Sounds”

Randy Gerdes

3 years ago

I am trying to turn off the new mail sound (Mezzo) in Big Sur 11.2.3. So far, I have turned it off in Notifications in the System preferences (and restarted my Mac mini M1) and turned it off in Mail Preferences (and restarted the Mac mini M1). No luck with either method. When I choose to turn it on and select a tone, it still chimes the Mezzo tone anyway. Any ideas? My next move is to delete the Mezzo sound and see what happens. Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

Randy: You can't really delete the Mezzo sound (at least not without turning off System Integrity Protection). Try redoing what you did before. The change in Mail Preferences should be the one that does it. If not, you'll need to call Apple about it. Or just keep using it -- is it really that important to spend a lot of effort on it?

I have some new info Gary. I have a MacBook Pro with same version of Big Sur and it does not have this problem. Only the M1 Mini. And, I found the place to turn off all sounds in the Preferences Sound panel and that seems to stop it. I appreciate your quick reply, and your videos are well done and very valuable to me. Thanks, Gary.

Chris

2 years ago

Randy- I'm in the same boat. Sound is off for new mail and mezzo plays every time. I'm a teacher and the laptop dings every time I get a message during class and I have to use sound for google meet. My only option is to close the mail app. Have you figured this out yet? If so, please share!

Terry Smelker

Gary, thank you for posting this info about changing the MacOS Alert sounds! What about the system sounds- Move to/Empty Trash, Move file/mount volume, etc? I know that I can't physically change the new Big Sur system sounds by copy/paste because of the new security protocols, but is there a way to add them in my User folder and then change settings thru Terminal? Or perhaps an applet that lets the user override the default system sounds without altering the actual Big Sur sounds themselves?

Terry: No, there's no way to change those sounds without altering macOS.

I think someone needs to design an applet that allows substitutions for system sounds without actually altering MacOS. I miss my old system sounds!

Comments Closed.

The New macOS Big Sur System Alert Sounds and How To Keep the Old Sounds

Comments: 7 Responses to “The New macOS Big Sur System Alert Sounds and How To Keep the Old Sounds”

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