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Creepy Voice Emerging from my MacBookPro at 3AM

outskirtsofinfinity

outskirtsofinfinity

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 2, 2017
273
778
Calgary
So, I have a 15-inch MacBook Pro [ 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost 4.1G Radeon Pro 560 with 4GB memory 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory 512GB SSD storage ] that I purchased exactly a year ago. OS X is up-to-date with the latest version, at all times.

I was woken up at 3am last night by this godawful, creepy, British, pedophile-sounding voice saying "System Alert... battery power is low" or some such thing. It literally scared the living daylights out of me, and my poor girlfriend screamed and fell out of the bed and started crying! It was not Siri (as it would have been if this came from OS X), but some male scary pedo dude that I had never heard before, and it made my computer, which I (we) kinda have a personal relationship with, feel alien and scary somehow. I'm scared of approaching it now.

Just three questions:

(a) Why would there be a strange male voice emanating from my computer (instead of Siri)
(b) Why would it go off at 3 am when clearly that is an idiotic time to Alert you about anything whatsoever - are Apple software engineers crazy?
(c) Is there a way to prevent this from happening (when I muster up enough courage to open the laptop again)?

Thanks for any tips...
 
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I think you have some sort of accessibility feature turned on to have the computer verbally tell you when the battery is very low, and it happened to get to the point that the alert was triggered at 3AM.

If you can’t find anything in those settings to turn off I’d recommend an exorcist and dousing your computer with holy water.
 
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outskirtsofinfinity said:
So, I have a 15-inch MacBook Pro [ 3.1GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, Turbo Boost 4.1G Radeon Pro 560 with 4GB memory 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 memory 512GB SSD storage ] that I purchased exactly a year ago. OS X is up-to-date with the latest version, at all times.

I was woken up at 3am last night by this godawful, creepy, British, pedophile-sounding voice saying "System Alert... system power is low" or some such thing. It literally scared the living daylights out of me, and my poor girlfriend screamed and fell out of the bed and started crying! It was not Siri (as it would have been if this came from OS X), but some male scary pedo dude that I had never heard before, and it made my computer, which I (we) kinda have a personal relationship with, feel alien and scary somehow. I'm scared of approaching it now.

Just three questions:

(a) Why would there be a strange male voice emanating from my computer (instead of Siri)
(b) Why would it go off at 3 am when clearly that is an idiotic time to Alert you about anything whatsoever - are Apple software engineers crazy?
(c) Is there a way from preventing this from happening (when I muster up enough courage to open the laptop again)?

Thanks for any tips...
Click to expand...
Look in System Preferences, Accessibility, and look under the Speech section. If you have "Enable announcements" checked, you'll get messages like this.
 
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Back in 2001 I was inspired to customize my alert sounds. I awoke in the middle of the night to my “TiBook” intoning, “It’s all part of the plan. It’s all part of the plan. It’s all part of the plan . . . .”
 
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Hmm interesting....

Was it exactly 3am or roughly 3am that this happened? If it was exactly 3am then it would be even more of a coincidence that some alert went off exactly then.

Is it possible that someone managed to set this up to happen as a joke? I have a friend with a Alexa thingy and every time i go round his house i wait until he goes to the bathroom and then set tell Alexa to set an alarm for 5am!

I would be surprised if Apple programmed their stuff to use a different accent for system alerts than they customer had set for their home country ( I assume you've set it up as Canadian).

You said you purchased the laptop exactly a year ago! Is it possible that just before you bought the machine somebody set an alert/reminder for a year from that date?
 
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Thanks, guys!

I checked Accessibility -> Speech, and that Announcement box is Unchecked, as it has always been.

No, sorry, it was some time between 3AM and 3:30AM, whenever the battery happened to get low, that the nitwit decided to wake us up. I was too tired to note the precise time and my gf was freaking out.

As for Siri's voice, it's set to the usual female voice that we're all familiar with. I use Siri all the time on my macOS, and it's always the same female voice. Which makes it so puzzling why this "alert" would have this creepy, terrifying(!) British male accent.

Maybe if I could change it from Mr. Pedo to Siri, the problem of battery alerts in the middle of the night would go away... because Siri actually knows what time it is (I just asked her on my phone). I don't mind being reminded during the DAY, if it's from someone I know. And, frankly, I don't care if the battery runs out while I and most others are fast asleep (who would? Jeez...).

I'm in Canada, yes.,...

I'm stumped. So, yes, Speech | Announcements is - and always has been - turned off. What else can I try? Except garlic, that is?
 
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Check other software you may have installed. There are some which helpfully watch for you system and provide feedback and warnings. This may be non-system tool installed and forgotten. Especially if you migrated from prior system, you may have something which moved. I was recently removing stuff from ~2014 on my 2017 MPB, utilities mostly, but even kexts got moved. All moved by migration assistant.
 
Go into preferences, accessibility, voiceover and turn it off.


edit:
turn it on, re-start and turn it off


its possible somehow the GUI is out of sync with reality.
 
"Is there a way to prevent this from happening (when I muster up enough courage to open the laptop again)?"

Yes, there is.
POWER DOWN the MBP before you go to bed.
It should not speak to you at night if you do this. ;)
 
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Something like this happening any where between 2am-3am means you are being watched. But watched could be as simple as a spider within 10ft of you, a spirit or demon inhabiting your residence, or even something or someone from outer space. In the scheme of reality, really nothing to worry about with the above, for the most part. I would worry if it is another living human being though.
 
rem2 said:
Something like this happening any where between 2am-3am means you are being watched. But watched could be as simple as a spider within 10ft of you, a spirit or demon inhabiting your residence, or even something or someone from outer space. In the scheme of reality, really nothing to worry about with the above, for the most part. I would worry if it is another living human being though.
Click to expand...


This is EXACTLY why I sleep wrapped up in a tin foil cocoon wearing flea collars on hands and ankles, with a garlic clove necklace.
[doublepost=1532620113][/doublepost]
Fishrrman said:
"Is there a way to prevent this from happening (when I muster up enough courage to open the laptop again)?"

Yes, there is.
POWER DOWN the MBP before you go to bed.
It should not speak to you at night if you do this. ;)
Click to expand...

INGENIOUS!! :D
[doublepost=1532621758][/doublepost]Was the voice like this:



...or more like this:


 
Are you definitely sure the sound came from your laptop? Is there a chance it came from another battery reliant device that may have been in your bedroom, or, was there somebody hiding under your bed?
 
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System Preferences > Dictation and Speech > Announce when alerts are displayed <-- Uncheck that.
 
Millions and millions of Macs in the world... and just one thread with this kind of story. Think.

guess: someone is playing a joke.

Shared walls/floor/ceiling? A neighbor playing a joke holding the recording up to a vent?

Some scare-based game or app installed? Someone else in the house playing such a game or maybe videos?

Smoke detector or similar? What else in the room uses a battery? Anything with a battery backup like maybe a DVR? Modem? Alarm System (my alarm system low battery alert only sounds off in the middle of the night too)? Mobile devices?

Any windows open such that you might have heard something OUTSIDE your home?

When awakened in the wee hours, are you even sure you heard what you heard? Did your reaction to maybe a dream cause you knock your girlfriend out of bed and/or scare her, resulting in her crying? Or did SHE hear the same voice & message so you know it's not all in your (subconscious) head?

Experiment: drain the battery(s) way down (in the daytime) and see if you can summon the alert again. That's easy to do if you have confidence it was your computer.

And look around the room for other things that lean on batteries. If there actually was such an alert, I bet it was something else. Again, way too many Macs in the world for this to be an isolated, unique case.
 
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