You're not the first person who has asked me how to disable this alert sound, actually. It's really rather classic Facebook user interface: they just changed it one day, without warning and without any indication of how to disable it. The result? A lot of people are frustrated that they can't have audio enabled while they're on Facebook lest their workmates or cafe-friends know that they're not really focused on work.

You can disable it, but just like everything else with Facebook, you need to know where to look, and that keeps changing. It's fun, though, it's like a user experience game, right? You get points (e.g., get Facebook to work the way you want) if you can figure it out. :-)

No, more seriously, it is frustrating for a huge percentage of the billion plus users of Facebook that on any given day things can have changed in subtle - or not so subtle - ways, without any warning, without any notification. You just notice on your newsfeed that your friends are complaining about something different. Not so good.

So let's see how to disable the notification alert. Start by choosing "Account Settings" from the gear menu on the top right:

Once you've chosen that, look on the left side of the resultant screen for a list of major categories of settings you can change:

The choice you want is "Notifications", so click on that and you'll be shown a rather surprisingly comprehensive list of different types of notifications that Facebook can send to your phone, your email inbox, or directly to your Web browser:

Look closely at the first entry, "On Facebook". It says "All notifications, sounds on". That's the culprit!

Click on "View" just to the right of that line and it'll expand to show you the checkbox you want to uncheck:

Now you've got it, by George! Uncheck "Play a sound when each new notification is received." and click "Save Changes".

That's it:

Easy enough now that I've shown you, right?

Now, while we're talking about Facebook, don't forget to "like" the Ask Dave Taylor Fan Club so you can stay up to date on the extra content I post there too! Thanks.