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This may sound silly to all you mac people, but I come from a Windows world where I use customized sound schemes for everything. And I mean EVERYTHING! Little "bleeps" and "bloops" play whenever I resize, minimize, or maximize windows, click on anything in explorer, click the Start Menu, etc etc and, well, you get the idea.

Well, in any case, I've got Jaguar installed on my Mac, and for a carnivorous feline, it's just way toooooo quiet for my taste. Is there a way to set up something like a windows sound scheme, to have .wav files or something play upon operating system (GUI) events?

I checked the System Preferences but the only thing I've found under Sounds is to customize the one alert sound.

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As said, Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) exposes only the single alert sound in System Preferences — there was no built‑in Windows‑style sound scheme for every GUI event. ’s follow‑up about Xounds is the expected solution: Xounds installs a preference pane that maps short audio files to many UI events, and community sound‑packs were common at the time.

Practical setup notes: place custom sounds in ~/Library/Sounds or /Library/Sounds (create the folder if it does not exist). Short, lossless files (AIFF or WAV, ~44.1 kHz, very short duration) give the best timing. After installing Xounds, log out or restart so the preference pane appears; open System Preferences and choose a theme or assign individual files for events. For simple alert sounds that appear in the OS picker, placing files in the Sound folders is sufficient.

Troubleshooting and cautions: many 3rd‑party sound hacks used InputManager‑style hooks that could break after OS updates — keep installers and backups, and check for updated builds if an OS upgrade is planned. Some app‑specific clicks (Safari link clicks, for example) may not be exposed to system‑wide hooks; browser extensions or alternate browsers were the easier route for per‑link click sounds. Keep sounds very short and moderate in volume to avoid distraction, and remove/uninstall the hack before major system upgrades to reduce compatibility headaches.

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Member Avatar for MuddBuddha

Not in OSX. There are applications you can install to carry over OS9 sounds (which were customizable) and to create individual sound schemes - but nothing native in OSX itself - not sure why....seems rather basic.
But I can only speak for OSX.2.5 - I have not installed .6 yet.

Member Avatar for Dani

I couldn't find anything of this sort in 10.2.6 either, although I'm not using it now. If you check out my keyboard post you'll see why. Guess I'll do a search for such 3rd party applications. I can't stand the quiet!

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btw, I forgot to say thanks! :)

Member Avatar for MuddBuddha

De nada.

Saw the keyboard post too. I was actually sitting here trying to figure it out. I have a custom keyboard on my imac as well. I installed the software but only have partial use of the multimedia keys - the others are not supported on the mac platform.
As much as I have always been a fan and supporter of Apple....I wish they were a little more mainstream.
All the cool stuff is on PC.

Custom drivers are often rendered useless during OSX updates....no way around it.
This is where XP has one up on Mac.

Member Avatar for MuddBuddha

BTW....

Some sound apps can be found on Apples download page - but often Cnet has more

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Thanks. I was thinking of checking download.com as my first source anyways. :)

Member Avatar for MuddBuddha

Way to think a like. Brilliant minds....?

Member Avatar for Dani

Well, I installed Xounds and I love it! For anyone who's curious, it's by http://www.unsanity.com/ and is even available as part of the Aladdin Systems Ten for X utilities pack. There are even a whole lotta downloadable sound themes available at http://www.soundsetcentral.com

Now the only thing that I'm not happy with is that I miss the lil "click" noise I am used to with each Internet Explorer link in Windows Explorer. Too bad I'm using Safari here ;)

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