Change the AirDrop “Pop” Sound Effect

AirDrop is a great local peer-to-peer file sharing feature in Mac OS X Lion that is surprisingly useful. That said, the ‘pop’ or drop sound effect that you hear when someone AirDrops you a file has always annoyed me because it’s the same sound effect you hear when you get a new iChat message. Like many other things in OS X Lion, it’s easy to customize with some minor tweaking.

Before changing the sound effect you’ll need to get a new sound to replace it, so find a sound you want to use, but:

• The new sound effect must be in AIFF format. You can convert audio files to AIFF with iTunes or use a third party tool if you want
• Export the sound effect and name it “Invitation.aiff” and place it somewhere like the OS X Desktop for easy access.
• The shorter the sound effect, the better

A short sound is recommended because you don’t want an entire song playing when someone AirDrops you a file, but it will if you don’t shorten a long audio file.

Once you have saved your new audio file:

• Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window and enter the following path:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/

• Locate the file named “Invitation.aiff” and rename it to “Invitation-backup.aiff” – you will need to authenticate the name change, this allows you to revert the change back to the default AirDrop sound

• Drag and drop your own version of “Invitation.aiff” into the open /Resources/ folder, you will need to authenticate again
• Now open the Terminal from /Applications/Utilities/ and type:

killall Finder

• Have someone AirDrop you a new file and enjoy your new AirDrop sound effect

Anytime you want the default sound back, just delete your own Invitation.aiff and rename Invitation-backup.aiff back to Invitation.aiff, kill the Finder, and you’ll hear that familiar iChat pop sound again.

Check out some more OS X Lion tips while you’re at it.