Disable the System Beep on Ubuntu Edgy

I dislike the system beep on any computer, anywhere, anytime. Here’s how to turn it off in Ubuntu.

 

Go to System \ Preferences \ Sound and click the System Beep tab. 

Uncheck the box, and hit close. Easy as that!

The Geek is the founder of How-To Geek and a geek enthusiast. This article was written on 12/24/06 and tagged with: Ubuntu, Ubuntu Tips & Tweaks

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Comments (11)

1. March 1, 2007 12:45 pm
   mrli

   I think this only disables the annoying beep within Gnome, but how can I also disable it in all(Ctrl+Alt+F1(~6)) terminals altogether ?

2. March 7, 2007 6:01 pm
   davg

   yeah, that’s what I want to know

3. March 13, 2007 3:33 pm
   The Geek

   @arsgeek

   Good article.

4. May 16, 2007 3:20 pm
   ADC

   Thank YOU! It was driving me crazy..

5. December 8, 2007 1:29 pm
   pasted from somewhere else

   sudo rmmod pcspkr

   The place to blacklist modules is /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, so open and edit this file and add at the end of the file:

   blacklist pcspkr

   That’s it, no more beep beep beeep going around.

   Hope this will help handle your virtual console in a greater way

6. October 31, 2008 5:11 pm
   Colin

   I think this only disables the annoying beep within Gnome, but how can I also disable it in all(Ctrl+Alt+F1(~6)) terminals altogether ?

   Add “setterm -bfreq 0″ to your ~/.profile or /etc/profile.

7. November 1, 2008 5:01 am
   asdf

   sudo rmmod pcspkr
   blacklist pcspkr

   \o/

8. November 1, 2008 5:22 pm
   Owen

   mrli – best to leave it enabled outside Gnome, unfortunately, as particular combinations of system beeps can actually be trying to tell you what the problem is when your computer is *seriously* broken.

9. November 27, 2008 10:22 am
   NeptuneRX

   Thanks for this post, that blasted beep has caused more problems for me then I have time to tell.

10. January 29, 2009 3:46 pm
    Simon Shine

    As “asdf” points out, to properly disable the pc speaker throughout the system in Ubuntu:

    Edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add a line, “blacklist pcspkr”

    Going “sudo rmmod pcspkr” after every boot is bothersome.

11. March 12, 2009 8:48 am
    stopka2top

    It`s work on Debian Lenny 5.0
    modprobe -l |grep pcsp
    lsmod | grep pcsp
    Add in file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist founded variables
    for examlpe
    blacklist pcspkr
    blacklist snd_pcsp