This is gonna sound severely OCD, but... <shrug> So be it. I recently started running Apple's 2.1.3 version of "Mail" after several years of making due with web-based email. (This version ships with 10.4 - yes, I know, it's old. Unless you're volunteering to buy me a shiny new Mac that can run the newer versions, don't talk to me about upgrading to something newer) It functions well enough, but it has a flaw that's right on the edge of driving me back to the hell of web-based email: It makes cutesy noises. I hear you already - "Wuddaya mean, it makes noises?" Exactly that! IT MAKES NOISES! I hit send, and a jet plane whooshes by. It has trouble talking to the server, and I hear something like an asthmatic foghorn. It checks for mail but finds nothing, so it "plinks". And I have no idea what other situations might make it decide to sound off. And less interest! All I want is for it to shut up and silently handle my email traffic. Now, I'm sure there are folks who think it's cool, but so far as I'm concerned, the *ONLY* acceptable noise for a mail program to make is some sort of "New mail has arrived" signal. Aside from that, there's never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, any good reason for a mail program to make any sound at all. So I've gone looking for a way to silence Mail. With no luck. I've looked *EVERYWHERE* that makes even the most flimsy kind of sense to look, and come up with no way to make it shut up! Nothing in system prefs, nothing in the Mail program itself, nothing shows up on Google - NOTHING! Yet there MUST be a way to make this program shut the hell up and do its job silently, rather than having it trying to act like some sort of sound-effects program. Yes, I know this sounds like an insane gripe. Sorry, it's just how I am. Programs that make noises for no good reason bug me. SEVERELY. Even back in the days of the Apple II, I hated it when my computer made noises without my explicitly asking it to. So much that I literally wired in a switch to totally disable the speaker on my //e. That dislike for "chatty" computers hasn't changed a bit in all my years at a keyboard. Never mind that, at 4 in the everlovin' morning, that jet plane whoosh is (or at least seems) loud enough to wake the dead! So I turn to the "group mind": Can anyone tell me a way (that doesn't involve inane suggestions like "don't run it" or "turn off your speakers") to make Apple's Mail program operate in complete silence? The *ONLY* time I ever want to hear anything from it is when new mail comes in. Other than that, it should never, under any circumstances, make a sound. So how about it? Any ideas?