Here’s a simple but very useful trick for your Tuesday morning. You’re probably quite familiar with the beeping noise your Mac makes whenever you change its volume via the keyboard keys. This audio feedback can be useful at times, I suppose, but mainly, I just find it annoying. It’s especially annoying if you’re trying to work in a quiet environment like the library or on one of those joyous cross-country red-eye flights.
Thankfully, the solution is simple. To silence the volume-changing beep, just hold down the Shift key prior to pressing the Volume Up or Volume Down keys. (Note: this doesn’t work when you use your mouse to select the volume menu.) If you’re using an iBook or a PowerBook, and you’ve used the Keyboard System Preferences panel such that you have to use the Fn key in addition to the volume changing key, don’t worry—adding the Shift key still silences the beep, and doesn’t require too much in the way of finger gymnastics.