I was given a new Windows computer at work and it’s great, with a big, bright screen and comfortable keyboard. Problem is, it’s noisy and I want to mute all the system sounds. Not turn off all sound, just system beeps and such. Can I do that, and if so, how?
Glad you specified that you don’t want to turn off all the sound on your computer, because that’s really easy: Just click on “mute” or turn off your speakers. Having it so you can play music or listen to the audio from a YouTube video or similar is a bit more tricky, however, because you need to go into your Windows theme and change the sound set. Making this more tricky, there are some themes that actually install a new sound set so your system beep becomes a dog bark or fire siren or similar. Sure to please everyone else in your office area, yes? 🙂
Start with the same tactic I always suggest with Windows: Use the search system that’s part of your Start Menu. Running the first generation of Windows 10 with a start screen instead? Then use the Windows+S keyboard shortcut to bring up the search area on the right side of the screen instead. And upgrade to 10.1 so you can have a Desktop again and because it turns out that the old Start Menu is pretty handy!
Either way, a search for “audio” brings up a number of options:
Unusually, the top match is not what you want to choose; we’re not managing audio devices, but audio sounds. Instead click on and select “Themes and related settings“. That brings up this window of options and settings:
I happen to really like themes and am constantly tweaking and changing my themes to change the appearance and wallpaper on my own Win10 systems, but if this is new to you, notice on the left side that “Themes” is highlighted. The find and click on “Sounds“.
Weirdly, this brings up an old-school Windows 95-style window that looks like no-one’s updated it since about 1992:
I know, ugly as sin, and confusing too. But basically if you look in the middle section, it lists events that can trigger audio, then has a tiny speaker icon to denote if there’s a sound assigned to that particular trigger. Calendar Reminder has an associated sound, but Close Program does not. See how that works?
If you want, you can go through and turn off sounds throughout your Windows system on an event-by-event basis.
Note also “Play Windows Startup sound“. Yes, this is where you can turn that bing-bong sound off!
You want to turn off all alert sounds, however, so the quick and easy way to do that is through the tiny pop-up menu:
Choose “No Sounds”. Click “Apply”.
Close window.
Breath out. Ahhhhhh…. done.
Really like your weekly emails. I was just wondering, I’m trying to find a list of keyboard short cuts for both windows 10 and Google Chrome. My wife and I have several cats (+ dogs, no children) that love to show us keyboard shortcuts when we are trying to do something on the computers. Only problem, they (the cats) don’t show us what keys they walked on so we spent a bit of time trying to figure out how to un-do what they did. I have been trying to find something on the web, but really haven’t found any comprehensive lists/cheat sheets yet.
If you could just point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.
Bill
I think you need to take your pets to computer classes, Bill! 🙂 More seriously, though, try a Google search for “windows 10 keyboard shortcuts” and/or “Google Chrome keyboard shortcuts” and you’ll find a wealth of options!