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since I've upgraded to 20.04 last month, I keep hearing a double beep X6 times (like an alarm clock) each day exactly at 12:00.
I didn't install any alarm programs recently and I'm pretty sure the sound comes from the OS because it is muted when I turn off the system sound.
Did anyone experience something similar? I really don't have a clue on where to start looking...

Michael S
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    Any chance you installed an alarm sometime in the long past and forgot(something I tend to do)? Upgrade might have reset it. 12:00 seems like a default time. – crip659 Oct 06 '20 at 17:06
  • Couldn't find any such program... could it be something I've deleted a long time ago as Evolution, or am I having high hopes? – Michael S Oct 06 '20 at 19:40
  • Doubt anything that has been deleted would cause it, installed maybe. Never had cause to look for an alarm app, so do not even know what they be called or where they would be installed. A couple of names from this link are tea time and countdown. https://askubuntu.com/questions/284264/alarm-clock-for-ubuntu?rq=1 – crip659 Oct 06 '20 at 21:14
  • I have a the same issue, checked evolution but didn't find any alarm here. – Julia Shestakova Jun 10 '21 at 09:10
  • I have the same issue (but am not allowed to make a comment here), but I have it at 11:00 sharp (am). FWIW, the beeps sound like a classic 80-ies digital watch piezo beeps :-) I'm on CET (which is GMT +1 in winter, +2 in summer). Don't have any of the alarm apps installed, nothing in evolution either, and also nothing in user crontab or /etc/crontab. – Anton Jul 22 '21 at 16:45
  • I am also getting this, at 10am (in GMT+1), and it is deafening loud piezo beep – Frames Catherine White Jul 23 '21 at 09:03
  • I Can say for myself that installing KDE Plasma instead of GNOME (without completely removing Ubuntu) fixed the issue. – Michael S Jul 29 '21 at 07:25
  • Anyone found a solution to this? Every day at 12 and if it was off, once I turn it on it beeps – DinoSaadeh Oct 31 '21 at 09:11

1 Answers1

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The sound is probably a sound-only notification for some event in one of your calendars. It is played by evolution data server (even if you don't use Evolution but just GNOME Calendar). The sounds can be turned off in Evolution 3.43.1 and higher (unreleased at the time of writing) in the Settings or via:

gsettings set org.gnome.evolution-data-server.calendar notify-enable-audio false

If you use an older Evolution version and cannot update, then a rather crude workaround is to remove the audio file, i.e., sudo rm /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/alarm-clock-elapsed.oga. Be aware that this file is part of the sound-theme-freedesktop package and so it will be be restored whenever the package is reinstalled.

See https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/620061/501515 for further instructions and a general approach for debugging this.

real-or-random
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    On Ubuntu 20.04 gsettings set org.gnome.evolution-data-server.calendar notify-enable-audio false gives me "No such key “notify-enable-audio”" – Willi Mentzel Mar 24 '22 at 09:05
  • Evolution 3.43 (or in fact, it will be 3.44) is still unreleased. I added a workaround. (And sorry, I had a typo in my answer. It said 3.34 instead of 3.43...) – real-or-random Mar 25 '22 at 11:00