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How to turn off the annoying system beep in linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

Wed, Aug 23, 2006

ArsGeek, Linux, Ubuntu

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ack!

If you’re like me, you start getting real annoyed, real fast at the system beep that insists on beeping far to often. This system beep emits not from your laptop speakers, but from that deep, dank recesses of ancient pc technology that is a little speaker designed only to beep annoyingly. Short of ripping it out, here’s how to disable it.


You can disable this by editing a file and entering two simple lines.

gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

And then add:

#silly speaker beep
blacklist pcspkr

Save your file and the speaker beep will be gone when you reboot.

If you don’t want to wait until a reboot, simply type:

sudo rmmod pcspkr

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This post was written by:

arsgeek - who has written 1949 posts on ArsGeek.


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50 Comments For This Post

  1. Znurre Says:

    Or you can just oulle the *ucking speaker cable out from your mb :P

  2. arsgeek Says:

    :)

  3. nicolas Says:

    you should keep in mind that this beep can be useful (essential) for some ultimate debugging but personnally, for everday use, i unplugged it.

  4. alvin Says:

    thank for posting this - *very* helpful. system beep was driving me nuts.

  5. arsgeek Says:

    Glad you all are enjoying this article.

    geek out

  6. Ben Says:

    Thank you! Every time my laptop system beep goes off I can hear it echo down the hall…

  7. arsgeek Says:

    Heh… no problem!

  8. kj Says:

    hello arsgeek! do you know how to solve this problem to? On my lap-top, the speakers don’t mute when I plug in my headphones. I get sound on both!

  9. arsgeek Says:

    Hi KJ,

    I’m not sure off the top of my head. What make and model is your laptop?

  10. pjr Says:

    and if the module is compiled to kernel ?

  11. jhc Says:

    I’m having the same problem regarding my laptop speakers not muting when I plug in my headphones. Last week it was fine, but today it doesn’t work.

    My laptop is a Fujitsu Lifebook (N6220) running XP.

    Any help would be appreciated.

  12. arsgeek Says:

    Hey JHC, I’m not sure about XP machines - this tutorial was for linux.

    A quick google seems to show that the system beep can be disabled on the BIOS:

    Miscellaneous
    Configurations
    ___
    When selected, opens the Miscellaneous Configurations submenu to allow you to enable or dis-
    able the power button, power button LED, the Wake Up On LAN feature, system beep, and
    Instant MyMedia. (For systems with Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition installed, the
    [Wake On USB Device] also appears here.

    Check this pdf for more info:

    http://www.fujitsu-pc-asia.com/uguide/bios/winter05/n6220_bios.pdf

  13. yoursavior Says:

    JCH,
    all you need to do is go to your Volume Control,
    go to Switches and check “Headphone Jack Sense”

    If that option is not available in your Switches,
    go to Edit -> Preferences
    to make it available

  14. ventsi Says:

    Great tip This beep was so annoying. Thank you.

  15. mrli Says:

    Thanks ! A very nice addition to HowToGeek article !
    http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/disable-the-system-beep-on-ubuntu-edgy/

  16. Troff Says:

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

    When I got my Dell XPS1710 with XP preinstalled it would beep like it was trying to perform some kind of sonic cleaning and there was No Way to Turn It Off. It would ignore everything. Finally I got it to shut up by disabling the (hidden) beep device.

    Now I’ve installed Ubuntu on it and… GAH! I’m sorry, but what is the #¤% point of waking everyone within a 2 mile radius every time I press tab and there’s no completion? WTF?!

    So thank you again for massively improving my life by giving me the knowledge to undo the unfathombly retarded default setting.

  17. figjam Says:

    Disable the annoying beep or bell on tab-completion, it’s easy:

    Open up the file: /etc/inputrc

    uncomment the following line or just place it in the file
    set bell-style none

    It’s that simple and now all users don’t have to hear the annoying beep anymore

    It is much simpler than buggering about with modules and drivers.
    (this works on Feisty too)

  18. harry Says:

    harry3~/downloads>cat ./nobeepshutdown.sh
    #!/bin/bash
    #to be run as root
    #switch off system speaker and shutdown(halt) after $1 minutes (integer)
    sudo rmmod pcspkr
    sudo shutdown -h +${1:-20}

  19. Derek Says:

    Thanks for this. I hate that damn beep. Firefox was my last holdout.

  20. hkzlsahtia Says:

    Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! aocgogocnsvh

  21. ravi Says:

    if in case we want to turn on how to do it?

  22. PK Says:

    Thank you, you saved my day(s) :-)

  23. Dogmatica Says:

    to turn the beep back on:
    remove “blacklist pcspkr” from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

    or modprobe pcspkr

  24. Sarah Says:

    just what I needed, thanks!

  25. Pablo Says:

    Yes, man. Thanks a lot for this hint. I’m egg-zactly the kind that gets “really tired, really fast”, of that annoying stupid beep.

  26. Alain Says:

    Here’s another way to disable the annoying beep…

  27. Alain Says:

    Here’s another way to disable the annoying beep: http://alain.giantdorks.org/quick-tip-turn-off-the-annoying-system-beep-in-ubuntu/

  28. R.Foster Says:

    I LOVE you!!

    Thank you so much for the instructions, learned something valuable and got rid of that god forsaken beep.

  29. arsgeek Says:

    Wow. I er. . . love you too. ;) Glad I could help. This is by far one of the more followed articles on the site.

  30. a3+W6wP?JqR+gx}X Says:

    Thanks, that was VERY annoying when doing searching a page in Iceweasel.

  31. Cory Foy Says:

    WooHoo! Having come over to Ubuntu from Gentoo, it was extremely annoying having that beep, especially because I use tab-completion all the time, and it would beep whenever there was more than one option. Thanks a ton!

  32. Badger Says:

    Thanks, this is a lifesaver during classes! It’s rather embarrassing to have your system start beeping loudly when you are supposed to be paying attention to a lecture.

  33. Val Says:

    This was my #1 annoyance - thanks a ton!

  34. Denis Says:

    To turn off the annoying System Beep in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10.

    Click APPLICATIONS > PREFERENCES > SOUND > SYSTEM BEEP. then uncheck ENABLE SYSTEM BEEP.

  35. ændrük Says:

    Thanks, Denis! That’s a much nicer solution to the problem. Same instructions go for Ubuntu 8.04 as well.

  36. me Says:

    Wow. You’d think no operating system other than Linux ever gave you that “annoying system beep”.

    Psst…kid…it’s a PC thing.

    It’s perfectly okay to be ignorant of things like economics and history, but if you’re going to look this clueless about computers, you might want to write for the New York Times instead.

  37. Andy B. Says:

    I support Linux 100% but I feel that people should make an objective decision for themselves after reading The Truth about Linux.

  38. ctb Says:

    you can also disable it from within Xwindows using “xset b off” this prevents X applications from beeping.

  39. Jepri Says:

    That’s fabulous. I googled for this solution a few years ago and couldn’t find it, so I ended up patching and recompiling my kernel to remove the beep. Patching was clearly the long way around the problem.

  40. Tech blog Says:

    I hardly ever hear that beep! last time I heard it was when I shorted my RAM and the BIOS made the beep sound.

    You shouldn’t disable it, I hardly hear it, its main function is to alert you of critical problems.

  41. Lars Says:

    Thanks for the info. I haven’t tried the blacklisting yet (not rebooted yet), but the “on-demand” method works (Ubuntu 8.04).

    The beep WAS driving me crazy, especially in Vimperator, where is always beeped when it couldn’t match a regex I looked for with /.

  42. Alejandro Says:

    Hello. Thank you so much for bring this kind of useful (beep was about of blow my head off!!!)

  43. Andrew Says:

    Thank you so much. I have been running the Ibex since alpha. Have never had this problem before, but this fixed it nicely.

  44. Kabeer Says:

    Thanks! That really really annoying

  45. Superkikim Says:

    Thank you :-D Great tips. After I just installed Debian…

  46. noisygecko Says:

    Thanks for this tip. I just did a clean install of Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop and it started beeping again, very loudly, which is annoying in meetings.

    Previously in some version of Ubuntu there was a configuration screen where you could turn off the beep and enable flashing of the window instead. I wish I could find that again, but have wasted too much time on a really stupid problem. If anyone knows how to turn on the flashing, please let me know.

    Thanks again!

  47. Jesse Says:

    Thank you! Firefox can no longer use the system beep every time a ctrl + f search yields no results, and that is VERY good news!

  48. CC Says:

    Thank you so much. Every time I change my GDM login screen, it would beep even when I unchecked it in my sound preferences. This works in Hardy if anyone is wondering.

  49. Lisa Says:

    I’m so thankful to have found how to disable this — thank you for your article. I can’t tell you how many times that damn thing just makes me want to throw my computer across the room — it’s like it just nags you with that sound every time you do something just slightly imperfect. This tutorial is like a nice big fat roll of duct tape! Thanks! :)

  50. adnan Says:

    thanks. its really works. good job keep it up.

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