129. Choose How the Computer Alerts You  SEE ALSO 103 Change Your Desktop Picture 128 Zoom In
129. Choose How the Computer Alerts You 
Mac OS X comes with some 14 alert sounds , which are short sound effects that play each time an "alert" event occurs. Alerts happen for a variety of reasons: An application might generate an alert if it needs your attention and it's in the background, or if it pops up a dialog box that requires you to enter some information. The system might sound an alert if you enter invalid input or ask it to do something it can't. Depending on your tastes, you can have these events signaled by a soft watery echo ( Submarine ), a short ringing sound ( Glass ), a reedy woodwind ( Blow ), or numerous others. You can even use a sound effect that you provide yourself. When customizing your system, what sound the system makes when something goes wrong is just as important as your desktop picture or the position of your Dockthough tastes, of course, differ . If you have difficulty hearing, you might not be able to detect audio alerts that occur when Mac OS X notifies you of some important event. One way to work around this problem is to have the system flash the screen in addition to sounding the audio alert. When the flash feature is enabled, the screen goes suddenly white, then fades quickly back to the normal display level. | 1. | Open the Sound Preferences
Open the System Preferences application (under the Apple menu); click the Sound icon to open the Sound Preferences pane. Click the Sound Effects tab if it isn't already selected.
| | 2. | Select a Sound Effect
You are given a list of the built-in alert sound effects in the system. Click the name of one to hear it played . If you like it, simply close the System Preferences window; the alert sound is changed as soon as you click it.
| | 3. | Add Your Own Sound Effect If you have a sound effect you want to add to the system, first make sure it's in AIFF format; then place it in the Sounds folder inside the Library in your Home folder. The next time you open the Sound Preferences pane, your sound effect will appear in the list for you to select.  TIP Sound files created on Windows machines are often in WAV format; you can use any of a number of different software tools, including iTunes, to convert them to AIFF. In iTunes, first add the sound file to your Music Library ; then change iTunes's Importing Preferences to use the AIFF Encoder . You can then select the sound file in the Library, and then choose Convert Selection to AIFF from the Advanced menu. Select the AIFF file, then choose Show Song File from the File menu to access it in the Finder and move it to your Sounds folder. | | 4. | Set the Alert Volume
Use the Alert volume slider to define how loudly the alert sound will play. The alert will never play louder than the master system volume.
| | 5. | Open the Universal Access Preferences
To have the Mac flash the screen in addition to playing the alert sound, open the System Preferences application (under the Apple menu) and click Universal Access to open the Universal Access Preferences pane. Click the Hearing tab.
| | 6. | Enable the Alert Flash
Select the Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs check box. This option enables the flash effect for whenever the system would normally emit an alert sound. (The sound still plays even if the screen is set to flash.)
| | 7. | Test the Flash Effect
Click the Flash Screen button to see what the screen will look like when the alert flash occurs.
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