It‘s not an easy task to find good alert sounds for Mac OS X. If you are bored of “Ping” and “Hero” and the other default ones, I really don‘t know where to get quality alternatives that are short, sweet and do not get on your nerves after hearing them three times. But now I think I have found the perfect alert sound:

After downloading the excellent iPhone (oh no, not the iPhone again!) ringtones from Jason Romero I took the cricket sound and clipped only one zirp out of it. Presto: short, sweet and pleasing alert sound. And the subtle summer feeling is definitely a plus.

Download it here and put it in this folder: /System/Library/Sounds. Now you can choose it in System Preferences/Audio. Enjoy!

And if you know any good alert sound sites around, let me know! I miss clixsounds from back in the days of OS9…