How to disable the visual bell in Xterm

Question

I am getting really nervous when I press 'Tab' twice and screen is blinking (goes to opposite color and returns back).

I tried to change the setting in .Xdefaults file with:

XTerm*visualBell:  False

but could not get rid of this.

I also tried to kill the VNC process and re-created but it still doesn't work!

Does anybody have a solution for removing this behaviour?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 26 '09 at 06:48

4

I have found the problem: in my home directory there wan another .Xresources file in which it was written

XTerm*visualBell: True

So Xterm was initializing from not .Xdefaults but from .Xresources! Anyway thanks!

answered Sep 26 '09 at 06:48

Narek

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 22 '09 at 15:13

To disable it on a single xterm: Control middle-click on the xterm, and unselect 'Enable Visual Bell'

The default (according to the manpage) setting for the visual bell is off, so it must be getting turned on somewhere.

Run:

xrdb -query |grep -i ^xterm

And see if the visualBell resource is set.

To disable it for your current session, run:

echo 'xterm*visualBell: false' | xrdb -merge

Dennis Williamson · Answer 3 · 2009-09-22T07:58:37.410

Are you using xterm or gnome-terminal?

If the latter, the instructions here show how to turn on the visual bell. I've copied and reversed the instructions so you can turn it off:

Be sure gnome-terminal has the bell enabled: In the Gnome Terminal menu: Edit > Profile Preferences > Terminal Bell must be checked. Pressing backspace at a prompt should cause an annoying audible beep.
Turn on window flashing: In the Gnome menu: System > Preferences > Sound, click on the Sounds tab, Change the "Visual alert" setting to "Disabled."
Enable the audible bell. In the same panel, check the "Play alert sound" check box.

Or you could edit the file ~/.gconf/apps/metacity/general/%gconf.xml and change this line so that it has "true" in it (yes, "true" for "off") as shown:

<entry name="visual_bell" mtime="1253605354" type="bool" value="true"/>

Also, as a workaround, in csh you can:

set nobeep

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Sep 22 '09 at 15:03

0

what about

xset b off

greetz

answered Sep 22 '09 at 15:03

zero_r

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That’s the audible bell, AFAIK. – Jens Jan 08 '19 at 22:05
I'd nerver saw it works! In OPENBSD, in Debian... – Daniel Bandeira Mar 28 '22 at 10:02

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 26 '09 at 11:00

0

A quick and easy way I do it:

rmmod pcspkr

answered Sep 26 '09 at 11:00

Coops

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That does a lot more (potentially unwanted) things than just turn off the `BEL`. – bballdave025 Dec 23 '21 at 00:03

score -1 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 22 '09 at 06:30

-1

~/.inputrc:

set bell-style none

answered Sep 22 '09 at 06:30

Andrejs Cainikovs

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doesn't work! BTW I am using csh via VNC. – Narek Sep 22 '09 at 06:33

How to disable the visual bell in Xterm

6 Answers6