This morning I had a bad case of nostalgia. I listened to the classic “Quack” Macintosh system alert sound in a YouTube video and I thought about the good old days, when computing felt magical and smelled of new. Of course, there was no Quack in the Sound preferences pane.
Apple got rid of all the good sounds in OS X, except for Sosumi, the cheeky sound that was added to the Mac in System 7 after a long trademark battle.
Thankfully, the internet came to the rescue, and I quickly got a zip with every classic Mac system sound. Here’s how to install those sounds (or any other sound in the AIFF format) in Mac OS X Mountain Lion and every other version of OS X.
• First, get the old Mac vintage sounds here. The ZIP file will unpack in your Downloads folder.
• Once they are downloaded, click on the Go menu in Mountain Lion’s Finder holding the option key pressed. You will see the Library folder. Apple hid the Library folder because it thinks it confuses users, but you can easily access it in this way.
• Look for the Sounds folder inside Library.
• Drag and drop the sounds you want inside that folder.
• Open System preferences and click on the Sound icon.
• Click on Sound Effects and you will see all the new sounds there, listed as Custom.
Enjoy your Quacks. And your Wild Eeps too!
Image: Shutterstock