Can the beep be turned off within MATLAB?

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This beeping beep is absolutely maddening. It's an admittedly petty gripe, but I make heavy use of arrowing up and down through the command history, so I get beeped at quite a lot and it's ruining my life.
After some frustrated googling, it seems this has been asked often over the years but has never been completely answered. I'm leaning towards the infernal beep being some perverse inside joke at The MathWorks, but perhaps the community can set me straight.
Here's my roundup:
  1. "beep off", formerly known as "system_dependent(14,0)", turns off the beep for errors, but does not universally disable the beep (e.g. mismatched delimiters or scrolling to the bottom of the command history still produce a beep).
  2. Mismatched delimiter beeps can be specifically turned off or changed to strikethrough in Preferences > Keyboard > Delimiter Matching.
  3. The beep can be brute force disabled by turning off the default tone in the OS sound settings (e.g. in Windows, set "Default Beep" to "None" in Control Panel > Sound > Sounds).
I'm hoping I just missed the easy answer in my searching. Else #3 seems to be the only recourse, but this will also turn off the default beep for any programs or services that might legitimately need to alert you, as opposed to just needing to irritate you and everyone in earshot. In fact, I make good use of the "beep" command in lengthy scripts to let me know when they finish while I work on something else. Very handy! But guess which command no longer works if you turn off the system beep at the OS level? [File Exchange (search tag:"beep") has some nice alternatives, but still.]
What the beep, Mathworks?
  1 Comment
Daniel Shub
Daniel Shub on 23 Apr 2012
Edited: Walter Roberson on 25 Oct 2015
While it seems you have searched around and this is not a particularly useful answer, some discussion of the beep is here:

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Accepted Answer

Sayand Sathish
Sayand Sathish on 19 Jun 2020
They implemented a new
beep off
command. It works! Hurrah!
  4 Comments
Stephan
Stephan on 1 Sep 2023
not for me ... beep off does not help in my case on windows 11 ... weird
Stephan
Stephan on 1 Sep 2023
Sorry, my mistake ... file was not saved before running. .. probably at least that was the reason. beep off works ...

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More Answers (5)

Pedro Busc
Pedro Busc on 3 Jun 2017
Why they dont just add a configuration option to turn this #@$@#$%@#SD beep off ???? !? !? !? !? !?!?!!!???

Jens Gronborg
Jens Gronborg on 26 Jul 2018
On windows 10 I simply open volume mixer, and turn down system sounds.

Sören
Sören on 25 Oct 2015
Please. Someone. Answer.
  3 Comments
Sören
Sören on 25 Oct 2015
I have Matlab 2014b, Windows 7, and I want the Beep turned off under the exact same circumstances as Jacob Shea 3 years ago.
Jan
Jan on 25 Oct 2015
And the answers given in the past are still valid. So I suggest to switch to Linux. Sorry.

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Jan
Jan on 23 Apr 2012
Edited: Jan on 25 Oct 2015
I've disabled the the beeping for delimiter matching. Now during standard use of Matlab I hear the beep only when I search in the editor and hit the margin. To reduce the impact of this beep, I've chosen a silent rustle sound.
When exactly do you hear more beeps than you need or want?
  5 Comments
Jacob Shea
Jacob Shea on 23 Apr 2012
@Jan: As for getting feedback, since I'm already staring at the command line looking for the desired prior command I can clearly see when it reaches the end because it reverts to the original entry. So I don't need the audible feedback. In the case of searching it's arguably more useful since the "no results" or "end of search" message appears in the lower left corner and isn't as readily apparent.
Thanks for engaging me on this silly issue, it's good medicine.
Jan
Jan on 23 Apr 2012
Edited: Jan on 25 Oct 2015
I agree that it would be easy and user-friendly to allow a adjustment of the notifications. The different settings for the delimiter matching lead in the right direction.
Whenever my computer beeps too much or the radiator gurgles, I lean back and calm down, because I'm so happy that it is not a tinnitus, such that the sound will disappear as soon, as I shut down the device.

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Ciro Grieco
Ciro Grieco on 11 Jan 2022
Edited: Ciro Grieco on 11 Jan 2022
In Windows 10, instead of turning off all the sounds in pannel control > hardware and sounds > change system's acoustic sounds, you can only set 'default acoustic sound' to 'none 'in the event's menu under 'windows'.
  3 Comments
Jacob Shea
Jacob Shea on 11 Jan 2022
Haha, I see I already knew this in the OP. Well, thanks for reminding me anyway. Several computers later, and they're all still beeping at me.
Brian Lear
Brian Lear on 16 Feb 2022
Yah, seems like a pretty ridiculous oversight to not be able to disable sound in the application.

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