Why is my OS X menu bar making a "click" noise?

October 14, 2004 10:08 AM

OS X: All of a sudden clicking things on the menu bar of any program makes a SF-like "click" noise. (I checked under sounds in the system preferences and noises from the interface is unchecked.) It happens when I click on the Apple in the top right or the program name and sometimes File. I have not installed any news software. My question is: WTF?

That should say top left.

And now it's spreading. It now clicks when I click reload on the browser or send on my email program (entourage).

posted by dobbs to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Is the click an OS X sound you can identify (is it in the list of sounds you can choose from in the sounds preference pane) or is it a completely new sound?

I don't really have any ideas, but this might be a start.
posted by o2b at 11:43 AM on October 14, 2004

I've had this happen randomly a couple times. Are you sure the "Play user interface sound effects" option in the Sound preference is unchecked? It sometimes "checks itself" on me.
posted by mkultra at 11:53 AM on October 14, 2004

o2b, it's a unique sound. It does sound similar to the TINK sound built into OSX but it's not it exactly.

mkultra, yeah, it's off. I just checked it again. In addition, the "alert volume" slider was at zero/off so even if they were on, I shouldn't have been hearing them. I had to turn that up to test for a similar sound.

Very strange.
posted by dobbs at 12:10 PM on October 14, 2004

Try turning the interface sound on, click around, then turn it off. Who knows maybe it's on but not giving you the appropriate check box setting.

Have you restarted? Does that do anything?

I guess if worse comes to worse, you could try zapping the PRAM. That's a throwback to OS 9, but I assume it still does something.
posted by willnot at 12:15 PM on October 14, 2004

Try this:

System Preferences > Universal Access > the Sound tab > see if there's a check by "Use click key sounds".
posted by emelenjr at 12:43 PM on October 14, 2004

Thanks all. I tried everything and nothing worked and then I logged into another user, logged back in as myself, and it magically fixed itself. It was starting to go mad with power though. It was beeping as I was selecting text, for instance.
posted by dobbs at 4:10 PM on October 14, 2004