Did you know that your system beeps when you receive an incoming email or when someone is trying to send you a video invitation through iChat? Only if you could hear the beeps, you would be able to reply in a timely manner.
Fret not, with OS X’s Universal Access, you are now able to “see” system beeps. Your screen will flash anytime there is a system beep and you now can answer or attend to anything in a timely manner!
The screen flash is turned off by default and to turn it on, check out the pictures below:
1. Open System Preferences and click on Universal Access.
2. In Universal Access pane, click on the “Hearing” tab and ensure that the checkbox is checked for “Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs.” You can also test you screen flash by hitting the Flash Screen button.
For iChat users, you will find that the Screen Flash to be very annoying when you first turn it on; however, you can fix that by going to iChat’s Preferences and configure the Alert pane. Personally, I configure all Events with “Play sound” unchecked (ie: Buddy Becomes Available, Unavailable, etc…) except for Video Invitation.
Jul 3, 2009The only problem with the flash screen feature is due to a single flash per alert with no option for an adjustable number of multi-flashes per a single alert for spaced-out users like me.
Aug 10, 2009I’m surprised you didn’t feature this and I strongly recommend using a free app called Growl. It is an awesome little program you can turn on to notify you when someone is sending you an IM, when a download finishes, or anything else! It is fully customized and you can add any programs you tend to use and would like to be notified by them for any reason. I swear by it and it is one of my login items! Instead of an annoying flash like others said above, you’ll get a pop-up window that actually tells you what’s going on (i.e. a buddy’s IM “ok I’m here at your door” popping up in a corner while you’re watching a movie or surfing the net). Convinced? Go to http://growl.info to download!
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9:53 pm
It’s useful when you are on multiple tasking and unable see if someone IMing you. However I stop because I received too many lately. It getting annoying so I stop it since.