Terminal in Gnome 3: Disable audible bell, enable visual bell

Question

For years, nay, decades (literally – two!), I have visual bell enabled in my terminals whenever possible, be it a humble XTerm or Gnome Terminal. Recently, after I switched from Unity to Gnome 3, I had an audible bell (over stereo speakers) in Gnome Terminal.

My searches up to now always seem to lead into the wrong direction: How to enable the audible bell or how to disable the whole thing completely. That’s not my intention. When at the prompt, when I press backspace too often or just before auto-completion, I want the terminal window to flicker, and I do not want to hear anything. Where is this setting hidden?

A.B. · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-11T11:12:26.477

44

Disable audible bell and enable visual bell with:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences audible-bell false
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences visual-bell true

and change the type of the visual bell if you don't need the fullscreen flash:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences visual-bell-type frame-flash

Options for visual-bell-type:

fullscreen-flash – causes a fullscreen white-black flash
frame-flash – causes the titlebar of the application which sent the bell signal to flash

edited Dec 11 '15 at 11:12

answered May 06 '15 at 12:44

A.B.

90,397

2

is this going to work on XFCE terminals? Cause it tried and and it did not work. – Soumitri Pattnaik Jul 31 '16 at 08:35
3

This didn't work for me either. – slm Jul 23 '18 at 04:55
If you use Vim note that it has its own bell setting. See :help visualbell. To enable Vim's visual feature, do: :set visualbell. – Adam Monsen Aug 07 '19 at 11:11
The above settings are visible in the GUI, under Settings / Universal Access / Visual Alerts. – Jonathan Hartley Oct 16 '19 at 20:27
For me, frame-flash flashes the whole window content black, not the title bar. – Jonathan Hartley Oct 16 '19 at 20:28
It took me a few minutes to realize that these settings only have an effect if the Terminal bell is enabled in gnome-terminal itself. – YoungFrog Jul 04 '20 at 07:50
None of these seem to do anything unfortunately (Gnome Terminal 3.30.2) – Romuald Brunet Jan 05 '22 at 08:39
flash flashes the content of the frame that caused the alert rather than flashing the whole desktop content – Jasen Feb 22 '23 at 21:45
please come up with a different solution. this one no longer works. – James Bowery Aug 07 '23 at 21:41

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '23 at 12:24

1

Go to Preferences, Profiles, click on the active profile, click the Text tab, and uncheck "Terminal bell"

answered Apr 09 '23 at 12:24

Mahdi mehrabi

386

The GUI is misleading if you have the default profile which is called "unnamed". You must not click on "Profile" You must look under it and click on "unnamed". Please include this in your answer. – James Bowery Aug 07 '23 at 21:44

Terminal in Gnome 3: Disable audible bell, enable visual bell

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