After updating to F37, the new XFCE desktop appears to have implemented the screen beep/bell function. The default beep/bell audio is quite annoying, does anyone know where the setting for that is, I can't find it.
I tried doing
xset b off
But it's still barking at me.
On Mon, 21 Nov 2022 07:18:33 -0500 Sam Varshavchik mrsam@courier-mta.com wrote:
After updating to F37, the new XFCE desktop appears to have implemented the screen beep/bell function. The default beep/bell audio is quite annoying, does anyone know where the setting for that is, I can't find it.
I tried doing
xset b off
But it's still barking at me.
The xfce man pages have this settings editor,
https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-settings/editor
It seems you aren't alone in your dislike of this 'feature'.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/214607/how-to-disable-beep-tone-in-...
stan via users writes:
On Mon, 21 Nov 2022 07:18:33 -0500 Sam Varshavchik mrsam@courier-mta.com wrote:
After updating to F37, the new XFCE desktop appears to have implemented the screen beep/bell function. The default beep/bell audio is quite annoying, does anyone know where the setting for that is, I can't find it.
I tried doing
xset b off
But it's still barking at me.
The xfce man pages have this settings editor,
Well, that doesn't tell me where's the setting for the audio bell.
It seems you aren't alone in your dislike of this 'feature'.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/214607/how-to-disable-beep-tone-in- xfce-when-the-delete-button-is-pressed
That's something else. That's talking about the X11 console beep, that's handled by X.
This is something that appears to be a new feature.
In xfce4-terminal's settings' "Advanced" tab I found an "Audible Bell" that shuts this off.
But ^G in emacs was still yapping away. I finally found "System Sounds" in audio mixer and turned out the volume of this.
But, somewhere, there must be a setting that let's you pick the actual audio bell that gets played, but I haven't found it. This is something that xfce might be inheriting from Gnome.
Sam Varshavchik writes:
This is something that appears to be a new feature.
In xfce4-terminal's settings' "Advanced" tab I found an "Audible Bell" that shuts this off.
But ^G in emacs was still yapping away. I finally found "System Sounds" in audio mixer and turned out the volume of this.
But, somewhere, there must be a setting that let's you pick the actual audio bell that gets played, but I haven't found it. This is something that xfce might be inheriting from Gnome.
I haven't had much success finding this elusive setting. Several of my systems with the XFCE desktop are behaving this way. grepping in ~/.config didn't find anything useful. The only way to mitigate this behavior is still to turn down "System Sounds" volume in the audio mixer.
I have a sneaky suspicion that XFCE inherited this from Gnome. There must be a Gnome configuration knob for this, if you're running the Gnome desktop; but this is not configurable in XFCE. You get this annoying drip sounds, similar to one of the annoyances from the old "Doggone Tired" MGM short, and no way to change it to something less annoying.
On 11/25/22 2:34 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Sam Varshavchik writes:
This is something that appears to be a new feature.
In xfce4-terminal's settings' "Advanced" tab I found an "Audible Bell" that shuts this off.
But ^G in emacs was still yapping away. I finally found "System Sounds" in audio mixer and turned out the volume of this.
But, somewhere, there must be a setting that let's you pick the actual audio bell that gets played, but I haven't found it. This is something that xfce might be inheriting from Gnome.
I haven't had much success finding this elusive setting. Several of my systems with the XFCE desktop are behaving this way. grepping in ~/.config didn't find anything useful. The only way to mitigate this behavior is still to turn down "System Sounds" volume in the audio mixer.
I have a sneaky suspicion that XFCE inherited this from Gnome. There must be a Gnome configuration knob for this, if you're running the Gnome desktop; but this is not configurable in XFCE. You get this annoying drip sounds, similar to one of the annoyances from the old "Doggone Tired" MGM short, and no way to change it to something less annoying.
Have you tried turning off this setting:
Appearance / Settings / Enable Event Sounds
???
An odd place for a sound-related setting, but there it is...
Dave
Dave Ulrick writes:
On 11/25/22 2:34 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
I have a sneaky suspicion that XFCE inherited this from Gnome. There must be a Gnome configuration knob for this, if you're running the Gnome desktop; but this is not configurable in XFCE. You get this annoying drip sounds, similar to one of the annoyances from the old "Doggone Tired" MGM short, and no way to change it to something less annoying.
Have you tried turning off this setting:
Appearance / Settings / Enable Event Sounds
???
This setting was already off.
An odd place for a sound-related setting, but there it is...
In addition to "System Sounds" in audio mixer, which actually does mute it. But still, no accessible way to configure it to something more easier on the ears.
On Fri, 2022-11-25 at 15:34 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
The only way to mitigate this behavior is still to turn down "System Sounds" volume in the audio mixer.
I suppose you could search for likely sounding file names for the sample that's played.
e.g. locate sounds|grep usr
Look through the results and play the likely candidates. Then if you find it, delete it, or replace it with something less annoying, or a silent file. Make a note of which file, so you can do the same thing after any updates.
On Sat, 2022-11-26 at 16:15 +1030, Tim via users wrote:
I suppose you could search for likely sounding file names for the sample that's played.
e.g. locate sounds|grep usr
Look through the results and play the likely candidates. Then if you find it, delete it, or replace it with something less annoying, or a silent file. Make a note of which file, so you can do the same thing after any updates.
Likely candidates on my (different) installation:
$ locate alerts|grep usr /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/bark.ogg /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/drip.ogg /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/glass.ogg /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/sonar.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/bark.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/drip.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/glass.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/sonar.ogg
Tim via users writes:
On Sat, 2022-11-26 at 16:15 +1030, Tim via users wrote:
I suppose you could search for likely sounding file names for the sample that's played.
e.g. locate sounds|grep usr
Look through the results and play the likely candidates. Then if you find it, delete it, or replace it with something less annoying, or a silent file. Make a note of which file, so you can do the same thing after any updates.
Likely candidates on my (different) installation:
$ locate alerts|grep usr /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/bark.ogg /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/drip.ogg /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/glass.ogg /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/sonar.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/bark.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/drip.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/glass.ogg /usr/share/sounds/mate/default/alerts/sonar.ogg
This seems to be /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga
In terms of turning it off, I already mentioned that muting "System Sounds" in audio mixer seems to be the global off switch.
Its package, sound-theme-freedesktop, doesn't seem to include anything that looks like a configuration tool. I presume that whatever in XFCE is playing that is configurable, somewhere, but I can't find it.
On Sat, Nov 26, 2022, at 4:15 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
This seems to be /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga
That might be configured via: /etc/pulse/default.pa
Mine has: load-sample-lazy x11-bell /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga load-module module-x11-bell sample=x11-bell
Doug H. writes:
On Sat, Nov 26, 2022, at 4:15 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
This seems to be /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga
That might be configured via: /etc/pulse/default.pa
Mine has: load-sample-lazy x11-bell /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga load-module module-x11-bell sample=x11-bell
/etc/pulse/default.pa does not exist here.
I'll think about creating one, and seeing if it makes any difference.
On 11/26/22 4:09 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Doug H. writes:
On Sat, Nov 26, 2022, at 4:15 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
This seems to be /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga
That might be configured via: /etc/pulse/default.pa
Mine has: load-sample-lazy x11-bell /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga load-module module-x11-bell sample=x11-bell
/etc/pulse/default.pa does not exist here.
I'll think about creating one, and seeing if it makes any difference.
[Three weeks later...]
Now that Fedora 35 has reached EOL, I've upgraded from Fedora 35 -> 36. This introduced me to the issue raised in this thread.
I occasionally like to get an audible notification when a long-running command finishes so I had been using Pulseaudio's 'module-x11-bell'. This plays an audio file such as a WAV file when an X11 bell event occurs. This sounds a lot nicer than a built-in beeper, plus it is necessary when using a PC that lacks the built-in beeper. Recently pipewire introduced compatibility support for this module so I've been using it since then.
However, now that Fedora 36 has come along, I experience this behavior:
1. The first time I log in after a reboot, there are _two_ sounds played for every beep: the sound I loaded for module-x11-bell plus a second sound that's configured in the dconf settings tree. Nothing I've tried will eliminate the second sound: disabling XFCE4 event sounds (Settings / Appearance / Settings), disabling sound in the dconf tree (org.gnome.desktop.sound), etc.. 2. If I log out of XFCE4 and log back in, the second sound no longer plays, regardless of whether event sounds are enabled or disabled in the ways I reference above. 3. (2) persists with all subsequent XFCE4 logins until I reboot the system, then I go back to (1). If I don't load module-x11-bell, I get one sound for each beep event if it's the first login and no sound for all subsequent logins. 4. If, when I log out, I kill the sound-related daemons (pipewire, wireplumber, and pipewire-pulse), the behavior for every single login is the same as described in (1) above. This suggests that the bell sound is being set up by one of these three daemons in such a way that it works for just one login.
As others have noted, muting System Sounds spares me from these sounds, but at the cost of muting other sounds I'd like to be able to hear (e.g., Thunderbird new mail notifications).
Right now I've settled on this solution:
1. Don't bother loading module-x11-bell. 2. Kill the sound-related daemons at logout using a script:
#!/bin/sh
killall pipewire wireplumber pipewire-pulse
I told XFCE to run the script at logout by adding it using Settings / Session and Startup / Application Autostart as an "at logout" trigger.
It still seems wrong that the bell sound is forced on me regardless of XFCE event sounds being off, but this approach at least makes the behavior consistent across all login sessions: one sound for each bell event.
I hardly know anything about pipewire & wireplumber so I'll have to do some research before I can pinpoint what exactly is causing these sounds to be played.
Dave
On 12/19/22 6:47 PM, Dave Ulrick wrote:
It still seems wrong that the bell sound is forced on me regardless of XFCE event sounds being off, but this approach at least makes the behavior consistent across all login sessions: one sound for each bell event.
I hardly know anything about pipewire & wireplumber so I'll have to do some research before I can pinpoint what exactly is causing these sounds to be played.
OK, I think I've found the root cause. It's in this stanza in /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf
context.modules = [ #{ name = <module-name> # [ args = { <key> = <value> ... } ] # [ flags = [ [ ifexists ] [ nofail ] ] #} # # Loads a module with the given parameters. # If ifexists is given, the module is ignored when it is not found. # If nofail is given, module initialization failures are ignored. # ... # Use libcanberra to play X11 Bell { name = libpipewire-module-x11-bell args = { #sink.name = "" #sample.name = "bell-window-system" #x11.display = null #x11.xauthority = null } flags = [ ifexists nofail ] } ... ]
Commenting out the stanza following the comment "Use libcanberra to play X11 Bell" disables the bell sound for all logins.
Given that this is a Pipewire configuration issue, should this be reported as a Fedora bug?
Dave
On 12/19/22 7:02 PM, Dave Ulrick wrote:
OK, I think I've found the root cause. It's in this stanza in /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf
context.modules = [ #{ name = <module-name> # [ args = { <key> = <value> ... } ] # [ flags = [ [ ifexists ] [ nofail ] ] #} # # Loads a module with the given parameters. # If ifexists is given, the module is ignored when it is not found. # If nofail is given, module initialization failures are ignored. # ... # Use libcanberra to play X11 Bell { name = libpipewire-module-x11-bell args = { #sink.name = "" #sample.name = "bell-window-system" #x11.display = null #x11.xauthority = null } flags = [ ifexists nofail ] } ... ]
Commenting out the stanza following the comment "Use libcanberra to play X11 Bell" disables the bell sound for all logins.
Given that this is a Pipewire configuration issue, should this be reported as a Fedora bug?
Never mind, it's an upstream Pipewire change:
# PipeWire 0.3.60 (2022-11-10)
This is a bugfix release that is API and ABI compatible with previous 0.3.x releases.
...
X11 Bell module will now be loaded by default when available
[https://github.com/PipeWire/pipewire/blob/master/NEWS]
Dave