The Constant Chiming
Ubuntu’s GNOME desktop environment plays an audible alert sound whenever a notification appears, when a dialogue box requires your attention, when a terminal command completes with an error, or when you reach the end of a text field and press an arrow key that has nowhere to go. While these system sounds provide useful audio cues in some environments, they are deeply irritating in shared office spaces, libraries, or late-night work sessions where a sudden “bloop” from your speakers breaks the silence. The sounds are also problematic during screen recordings, live presentations, and video calls where unexpected system audio leaks into the capture.
Silencing All System Notification Sounds
To stop Ubuntu from automatically playing notification and alert sounds, you need to disable the system sound effects through the GNOME Settings and the dconf configuration system.
Open the Settings app and navigate to Sound. Look for the Alert Volume slider (or “System Sounds” toggle depending on your Ubuntu version). Drag the alert volume slider all the way to the left, or toggle the system sounds switch to Off. This silences the audible component of notifications while keeping visual pop-ups intact. For a more thorough approach, open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.sound event-sounds false. This disables all GNOME event sounds system-wide, including the terminal bell, input error sounds, and notification chimes. If you also want to disable the login/startup sound, run gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.sound allow-volume-above-100-percent false and ensure no startup sound file is configured in /usr/share/gnome/autostart/.