How to Change the New Mail Sound in Apple Mail

This article explains how to change the new mail sound on a Mac using Apple Mail in OS X Lion (10.7) and later. It includes information on other Mail preferences you can customize.

How to Change the New Mail Sound in Apple Mail

The Mail app in Mac OS X  and macOS announces new mail with a default sound. However, you can choose a different alert tone from a list in Mail's preferences, and the one you select plays each time a new message arrives in your inbox.

To change the sound that plays when you receive a new message in Apple Mail:

1. Open the Mail app.

2. Select Mail > Preferences in the Mail menu bar.

   The keyboard shortcut to open Preferences is Command+, (comma).

3. Go to the General tab. 

4. In the drop-down menu next to New messages sound, select your favorite sound. The 14 options include Sosumi, Ping, Submarine, Tink, and other Apple favorites.

Other Mail Preferences

While you are in the Mail preferences screen, you may want to make a few other preference changes.

• Check for new messages is set to Automatically by default, but you can use the drop-down menu to change the frequency to every 5, 10, 15, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or to manual retrieval.
• Dock unread count displays the number of unread messages with a red number that is superimposed on the Mail icon in the Mac dock. The default is for the Inbox only, but you can change this setting to post a number for all email messages or only emails from the current day's date, or a few other more obscure options.
• Downloads folder is preconfigured to place all downloaded files in the Downloads folder, accessible on the dock. However, you can change the download location to any place on your Mac.
• Other options include a choice to add invitations to Calendar automatically, a setting to try sending your messages later if the outgoing service is unavailable, and the option to open messages in split view when in full screen.