Play sound when awaking from sleep?

Question

Hello! I'd like to make my Mac play a sound (.aif file) each time it awakes from sleep... any way to do this? How about playing a sound when starting up?
Thanks!
John Berry
iMac g5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Answer 1

Hi, John.
1. SleepWatcher isn't a tool for Terminal newbies, but it's the only utility of its kind of which I am aware. My book focuses on troubleshooting — valuable on its own — but not programming: implementing tasks with utilities like SleepWatcher is clearly in the programming category and involves writing shell scripts or AppleScripts.
I don't do programming tutorials on the Discussions since they can become very time consuming and if you make errors, then we get into a long thread trying to resolve them, which can be very difficult using a vehicle like the Discussions. I try to focus my limited time here on helping people troubleshoot their Macs. For questions like your post, I try to point them in the right direction or give them steps that can be accomplished without programming. I'm sure you can appreciate that.
2. You wrote: "Also, I can add my file to the Login Items pane but it doesn't automatically play -- QT starts up, loads the file, but it doesn't play automatically..."I see you sorted that out. I suspect you did so by changing the default application for the sound file in question to QuickTime and have QuickTime preferences set to play movies automatically when opened.
With QuickTime Pro you can save any sound file as a .sfil file and use PlaySnd to play it via Method B in my prior post.
3. You wrote: "I've been a Mac user since 1984... it was easy then, your file just went in the Startup Items folder (that doesn't seen to have the same function anymore...)."It still does.
Whether something is placed in /Library/StartupItems or added to your account's Login Items depends on if it is a System-wide function that should be started for all users before any users log in (e.g. enable the process used by anti-virus solution), or execute when a specific user logs in, respectively.
The SleepWatcher case is different: you need to know how to program the specific action you want the Mac to perform when sleep is invoked using a shell script.
There are plenty of resources available to learn the Terminal and Shell Scripting.
- I recommend some books and other online resources in my "Learning About Mac OS X" FAQ.
- Once you've made some headway in learning Terminal, one can find a plethora of resources concerning shell scripting with this Google search.
- There are a variety of Developer-related Apple Discussions for asking coding questions concerning UNIX/Terminal, AppleScript, etc.
- You could always e-mail SleepWatcher's author (his e-mail address is at the bottom of his Web page) for advice.
Why not take up the challenge of learning Terminal and a bit about shell scripting? It can be fun as well as a valuable skill. We only grow by challenge!
One of my mottos is: "Give a man a fish, feed him for today. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime."
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.