Turn Down the Volume of AppZapper’s ZAP! Sound

Usually, we don’t need actual uninstaller software on Mac OS X. To remove an app, simply drag it from the Applications folder to the trash and you’re done. Well, most of the time you are. Some apps drop stuff in other places and all apps have a preferences file. And if you don’t want to clean out those manually, AppZapper will do the job nicely.

AppZapper works great and there’s really not much to explain about it. But if you’ve run it at least once, you might have found one particular aspect of it to be at least a bit annoying. When you zap (remove) an application, AppZapper makes this really loud ZAP! sound. If you have your system sound set to a normal level, this zap sound will be significantly louder than that and might make you jump out of your skin. Since there’s no way of setting the sound level per application, we’ll have to do some minor surgery on AppZapper to tune it down a little.

AppZapper uses an AIFF sound file to make that horrendous zap sound. So all we need to do is reduce its volume to a comfortable level. The sound is stored inside AppZapper’s program package. Here’s how you can access that file:

1. Select the AppZapper application icon in Finder
2. Right-click (or control-click) the icon and select Show Package Contents
3. In the newly opened Finder window drill down to Contents/Resources and find the file named zap.aif
4. In case something goes wrong, make a copy of that file my hitting D

Now that we have located the file we need to manipulate, we need some kind of audio editor to do the volume tweaking. If you already have an appropriate tool, such as Fission or SoundStudio, you can use that. If not, get a copy of the free Audacity. The following steps will illustrate the process for Audacity.

1. Open zap.aif in Audacity
2. Select Edit->Select->All from the menu or press A.
3. Select Effect->Amplify… from the menu
4. Drag the slider to the left so the value in Amplification (dB) field becomes negative
5. Experiment with different setting until you reach a volume you’re comfortable with. If you don’t like a volume adjustment you just made, simply select Edit->Undo Amplify from the menu or hit Z.
6. When the volume is just right, select File->Export… from the menu
7. Select WAV, AIFF, and other uncompressed types from the Format dropdown menu.
8. Click Options
9. In the Format dropdown, select AIFF (Apple/SGI 16 bit PCM) and click OK.
10. Click Save.

The modified zap.aif file should now have been saved into Audacity’s package. Try zapping an application (either one you’ve been wanting to get rid of anyway, or quickly install some small shareware) and you should notice that the ZAP! doesn’t make you ears bleed anymore.

Tagged as: appzapper