How to turn off (or on) sounds from Visual Studio Code?

There is a commit that should be in v1.72 for two more audio cues:

terminal bell
task ended       "Plays a sound when a task ends."

• from https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/commit/001f7d5b4c20220ef7294f18616ad52df1039048

It looks like the previous audio cue setting: Audio Cues: Enabled is being replaced by a series of more specific settings. (At least, that setting has disappeared from my Insiders Build v1.65. A little odd that the general one-step enable/disable setting has been removed?)

But in v1.66 there is a volume control for all audio cuew that you could set to 0 to turn off or increase if the default of 50 is too low in volume:

Audio Cues Improvements

The new setting audioCues.volume (0-100, default is 50) can be used to control the volume of audio cues. We also updated the audio cue for folded regions.

You can individually disable these:

Audio Cues: Line Has Breakpoint  
Audio Cues: Line Has Error  
Audio Cues: Line Has Folded Areas  
Audio Cues: Line Has Inline Suggestion  
Audio Cues: Line Has Warning  
Audio Cues: No Inlay Hints  
Audio Cues: On Debug Break  

The default auto means the sound is enabled if there is screen reader attached.

Prior to v1.65

Audio Cues: Enabled

Options:

Auto: Enable audio cues when a screen reader is attached
On: Enable audio cues
Off: Disable audio cues

See v1.64 Release Notes: Audio Cues:

Audio cues indicate if the current line has certain markers, such as errors, breakpoints, or folded text regions.

They are played when the primary cursor changes its line or the first time a marker is added to the current line. Audio cues are enabled automatically when a screen reader is attached, but can also be turned on manually by setting audioCues.enabled to on.

More audio cues are to come and we will iterate on the sound design.

And in the Insiders Build v1.65 there are more applicable settings to separately enable certain kinds of audio cue events:

audioCues.onDebugBreak: Plays a sound when the debugger stopped on a breakpoint.  

audioCues.lineHasBreakpoint:  "Plays a sound when the active line has a breakpoint."  

audioCues.lineHasInlineSuggestion: "Plays a sound when the active line has an inline suggestion."  


audioCues.lineHasError: "Plays a sound when the active line has an error."  

audioCues.lineHasFoldedArea: "Plays a sound when the active line has a folded area that can be unfolded."  

audioCues.lineHasWarning: "Plays a sound when the active line has a warning."  (off by default)

How to hear the different sounds available and enable/disable individual audio/sound settings.

This is because you possibly have accessibility Support enabled, so you just have to disable it.

...
"editor.accessibilitySupport": "off",
...

Not an elegant solution, but works:

• Look towards the notification area which is typically located in the bottom-right corner of a Windows Desktop environment.
• Right-click the icon that looks like a Speaker, and select 'Open Volume Mixer' from the list of choices.

OR

• Press the 'Windows Key' or open the Start menu, and then type in 'audio devices' and select 'Manage audio devices' from the results, and hit enter.

THEN

• Scroll to the Application representing MS Visual Studio Code and hit the Mute button - voila!

MacOS / MacBook => VS Code Preferences => Accessibility Support => Off

** I was using VIM extension and it was triggering bell sound each time I pass over a line with some error shown by linter.

Windows Only

TL;DR Disable them system wide in Control Panel

I wanted to disable sound when discarding changes in VScode. It should work for all sounds tho since it's system wide.

From Windows Search Bar (next to Start): Control Panel -> Sound -> Sounds

In the drop down of sounds there are a number that play the same sound. You can test them first then set the ones U want to none. I disabled personally Asterisks, Close Program, Default Beep, & Exclamation to stop the sound.

This isn't a great solution since it disables the sounds via Windows system wide and not just in VScode, so be warned. These instructions are for Windows 10.

I'm not sure if this is going to help anyone but I'll add it anyway.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE accessibility settings turned off.

There are some truly horrible things that can happen when you have them turned on. the bell will go crazy with sounds every time you move around.

  "editor.accessibilitySupport": "off", // Very F@#@ing IMPORTANT 

You'll need to restart your terminals to make the following setting change to apply.

JSON settings version

Add/update the following line : "terminal.integrated.enableBell": false

GUI version

1. Open the user settings by either :

   • In the terminal panel, clicking the dropdown terminals list (in the upper-right corner) then "Configure Terminal Settings"

   • Or opening the Command Palette (ctrl+shift+P)

     • "Preferences: Open User Settings"
     • In the Search input, enter "@feature:terminal"

2. Scroll down to "Terminal> Integrated: Enable Bell" and uncheck it

For Mac. Go to: System preferences > search for Keyboard > and uncheck Show accessibility controls

go vscode settings and type Audio Cues
click to open image of my-settings like this
select Audio Cues: of, then it's working