Customize ringing/notification sound

[Luraktinus]

Some users (including me) find this high pitched sound unappealing, please let the users change it or go an octave lower. thank you --Lue

[KaKi87]

What ? I never pinged anyone in this issue.

[t3chguy]

[KaKi87]

Oh, but since the beginning I'm seeing plain text, how are you seeing a hyperlink ?

[t3chguy]

My guess is differing github permissions

[daniellekirkwood]

👋 Member of the product team here...

Thanks so much for all the feedback on this issue. Please rest assured that we understand how impactful this is to users. "Sound" more holistically is an item on our backlog and we will certainly get to it (and engage y'all here when we do). Unfortunately this is not something that we're looking at working on right now. Instead we're spending our time focussed on bugs such as stuck notifications, accessibility, timeline jumpiness, etc.

In the meantime, it is possible to change the sound of rooms from inside the room notifications settings. While I imagine this may be tedious for those users with lots of rooms, it is still possible to do. We are not looking at allowing folks the ability to personalise the sounds of Element as a whole.

Again, I appreciate all your comments and feedback. Please be patient with us as we're all working hard to ensure this is a product that you continue to enjoy to use.

[Ryonez]

We are not looking at allowing folks the ability to personalise the sounds of Element as a whole.

As a user I feel like this is the wrong decision. This is a 5 year old issue on just how bad the default sound is. Manually changing the sound for each room is frankly not going to happen. And honestly even if you barrelled through with not letting users change the sound overall, despite years of us trying to find some way to work around it, you could at least take an hour or two to find a default notification sound that isn't PTSD inducing. The amount of time this has caused chest pains when it's gone off sucks. Even when trying to limit the amount of time it goes off.

[piegamesde]

I have total understanding for not being able to customize the notification sound, for the reasons outlined.

However, why the default sound has not been changed to something more pleasant is beyond my understanding. (Tbf this is tracked in a separate issue, which should be bumped in priority IMO.)

Have a look at the other (desktop) messengers. Do users come in crying that they want to customize the notification sound? As far as I know, no. Why? Because theirs does not suck. I think it's fair to say that most users don't want a custom notification sound, they just want a good one.

[ShadowJonathan]

Alright, I have been understanding of Element's priorities for at least a long while now, but this has crossed my personal threshold for how much patience I have for this kind of corporate behaviour.

Since this is clearly not a priority, and still affecting a lot of users, either Element employees have gotten deaf or muted the sound themselves, or they simply don't care about accessibility like this, since there is clearly a breakdown of communication between those who prioritise, and those who consider user accessibility like this.

Therefore, I don't think that, in the end, Element cares about user accessibility, or user care, at all. Except for what looks good and what's flashy, given that this is still on the backburner, compared to other features and fixed being shipped left and right.

I understand Element's financial situation, but I have lost enough patience to care, and am now seeing this as a deficiency of theirs to not come back to the community on this.

[t3chguy]

either Element employees have gotten deaf or muted the sound themselves, or they simply don't care about accessibility like this

@ShadowJonathan you are aware https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/9143 landed, yes? It'll be in today's release. Its not the final state of the situation but it resolves the primary complaint of volume.

I don't think that, in the end, Element cares about user accessibility

As someone who has personally spent many weeks both paid and unpaid working on accessibility you can rightly fact check yourself.

[KaKi87]

That's not enough. Especially for a several years old issue. We want what we actually asked for.

[offsetcyan]

If you've needed the feature for several years, you could always submit a PR

[piegamesde]

@grxnola You mean like this? https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/11078 (also allegedly there have been several PRs on that topic who either rot or got rejected, mine is far from being the first one)

[lectrode]

@ShadowJonathan you are aware matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#9143 landed, yes? It'll be in today's release. Its not the final state of the situation but it resolves the primary complaint of volume.

While that is certainly a small step in the right direction (it took nearly an entire year just to accept a PR to reduce the volume of some of the sounds?! Wtf...), that does not resolve the primary complaint that the existing ring/notification sounds are jarring enough to wake the dead.

As someone who has personally spent many weeks both paid and unpaid working on accessibility you can rightly fact check yourself.

I don't think anyone is questioning work ethic of contributors - only the apparent strictness with which PRs and other improvements are adopted. A review and approval process is definitely a good thing, but there is such a thing as "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good". In this case, smaller improvements that provide a net benefit are rejected because there are projects "in the works" that will resolve something related.

That would be fine, except that those projects take years to complete (the supposed sound theming project has been in progress for over 7 years), leaving a gaping accessibility hole in the client for everyone during the interim. The proper solution for this would be to adopt a better ring and notification sound for now, and provide a refined/"perfect" sound theming solution later.

[epicEaston197]

Bro when I first heard the notification sound for ringing I thought my spaceship was under attack

[luixxiul]

This is a cross-post from https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/5031#issuecomment-1663412472 to let you guys know that schildichat, an Element-based client, has implemented an option to select a less stressful notification sound which should not be so jarring.

The proper solution for this would be to adopt a better ring and notification sound for now, and provide a refined/"perfect" sound theming solution later.

[adamency]

@daniellekirkwood

We are not looking at allowing folks the ability to personalise the sounds of Element as a whole.

Please explain the reasoning behind this decision ? You have simply stated this without ever explaining why this idea was rejected. I don't understand how changing a sound file on your own instance can be problematic.

[cknoll]

As I understand this issue will remain open quite a while. While I personally do not like the element sounds I can live with this becaus as a whole I really like the app.

Anyway it would be nice to have some collections of workarround in this issue. Some of the first messages discuss which files to change manually. I would like to do so but I use element via flatpak. If anyone knows how to exchange the media files inside a flatpak container, please let me know.

Update: At least I managed to get reading access to the actual media files:

• on the host system: flatpak run --filesystem=home --command=bash im.riot.Riot
• inside the flatpak bash: cp /app/Element/resources/webapp.asar /home/myuser
• on the host system in your homedir: npx asar extract webapp.asar webapp.asar.unpacked

Remaining steps:

• exchange media files (e.g. use /usr/share/sounds/Oxygen-Im-Phone-Ring.ogg from KDE (path might be debian specific))
• recreate compressed file webapp.asar
• copy that file to the correct location such that flatpak run im.riot.Riot will use it.

[daniellekirkwood]

@daniellekirkwood

We are not looking at allowing folks the ability to personalise the sounds of Element as a whole.

Please explain the reasoning behind this decision ? You have simply stated this without ever explaining why this idea was rejected. I don't understand how changing a sound file on your own instance can be problematic.

We will be reviewing sound as a holistic topic across our product set in the future. Until then, we are focussing our efforts on gnarly bugs, things such as stuck notifications and threads issues.

When we get to reviewing Sound and our notifications interactions as a whole we'll aboslutely consult folks here and take all of this feedback into consideration.

Please bear in mind: There are a lot of switches and customisations in our product and this makes Element harder to use for many people. We are trying to reduce the number of customisations in the product and re-introduce them purposefully with the right level of consideration and feedback.

[cknoll]

We will be reviewing sound as a holistic topic across our product set in the future.

I, personally understand this approach. After all I use element as a free product and I do not have any right to arrogate specific features or to decide how to prioritize development.

On the other hand the developers should keep in mind that sound is an emotional topic and sounds which are perceived as "bad" can alienate users much more than some (minor) bugs. I think the general problem is that people in this issue are probably not affected by other bugs and issues and see the sound problem as the one big thing. Therefore, they lack understanding why this takes so long (issue open since 2017).

I think, compiling some comunity-contributed tutorials for workarounds (like manually changing the sound files) would help here. Because people who are really passionate about this topic then would have another option then just wo wait (or abandon element).

[adamency]

Please bear in mind: There are a lot of switches and customisations in our product and this makes Element harder to use for many people. We are trying to reduce the number of customisations in the product and re-introduce them purposefully with the right level of consideration and feedback.

I can understand this. However, couldn't we set a default and then simply allow in settings to modify the sound if wanted ? This wouldn't add another necessary configuration option and still allow folks to change the sounds if they want to.

[Californian]

@daniellekirkwood Please bear in mind: There are a lot of switches and customisations in our product and this makes Element harder to use for many people. We are trying to reduce the number of customisations in the product and re-introduce them purposefully with the right level of consideration and feedback.

I think this is the main point of tension, but I totally understand where you're coming from from a product perspective: 90%+ of users will never change a default notification sound, but all users might see the clutter that would come from adding a UI for the option!

"Customization reduction" is, however, is a terrifying thing for any power user to ponder and, depending on implementation, risks significant user churn among the most active users and advocators of the product.

There is, however, a very common UX pattern for dealing with this tension that I sincerely hope you're adopting (for this issue and in general): an "advanced"/"developer" mode. Let power users tinker and change stuff in a maximalist settings screen world, let normal users get their messages reliably without clutter. It's really the best of both worlds! It's already in use in some sections of the UI, but a global toggle (or settings-tab-level toggles, but not the current intra-tab, section-level toggles) would do wonders to reduce cluter while still allowing for the flexibility of contributions like the PRs enabling users to choose a different sound.

Just my 2 cents!

[ThiefMaster]

"Customization reduction" is, however, is a terrifying thing for any power user to ponder and, depending on implementation, risks significant user churn among the most active users and advocators of the product.

Yes. I had to restrain myself not to write a much more strongly-worded comment as a reply to this quote (which I hadn't seen before). Because I'm fucking sick of applications dumbing down their stuff all the time, and every time they do this I tend to use some feature/switch which I found very useful.

Just have a simple set of basic settings for "normal users". Good defaults, and easy to change those where the defaults may not be everyone's liking (ctrl+senter vs enter to send for example - all the messengers like Skype that removed this added it back ;))

And then as @Californian suggested hide the rest under some "advanced settings" toggle. Maybe not as crazy as about:config in Firefox, but just so power users can still customize things...

[KaKi87]

Concretely : what in the world do we have to do to get this feature now ?!

[eslerm]

Concretely : what in the world do we have to do to get this feature now ?!

Community requests for accessibility will likely continue not being a priority https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/5031.

If you work for an organization or government which is considering hiring or granting money to Element.io or Matrix developers, make sure their sales reps know that accessibility issues, like this, are important.

[Bugsbane]

Take a listen to the ringtone here: https://freesound.org/people/Thoribass/sounds/254822/

The player has a "loop" option, just click the refresh-page-like, two arrows in a circle icon.

I think most people would prefer this to the current sound, and it's already permissively licensed (CC-BY). It's certainly much less stress-inducing!

[azymohliad]

I would really like an option to set a custom ringtone. I startle every time I get an unexpected call in Element. I would really want a ringtone that starts quietly and then ramps up in 10 seconds or so. On the phone I might prefer a faster ramp up time, but on desktop I'm often in my headphones. I guess there's no one size fits all here with a predefined ringtone, and a customizable one would be really really useful.

[ShadowJonathan]

Happy belated 6-year issue birthday, by the way.

[VermiumSifell]

I really think this feature should be implemented, will probably make more power users ask more friends to join the Matrix world too.

[sl5net]

90%+ of users will never change a default

Having separate simple and advanced options menus is a great way to cater to both beginner and experienced users in your app.

Simple Menu:

• Focus on the most essential functionalities.

Advanced Menu:

• Offer more granular control. This could include different sounds.

[autoteelar]

i havent used element in years, schildichat lets you change it

On Friday, May 10, 2024, sl5net @.***> wrote:

90%+ of users will never change a default

Having separate simple and advanced options menus is a great way to cater to both beginner and experienced users in your app.

Simple Menu:

Focus on the most essential functionalities.

Advanced Menu:

Offer more granular control. This could include different sounds.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you commented.< https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/meips/ADKq_NZ_oaBABjfii55_MZH2kpHMMcj-HiRk5klKj4gyEhNpiqSoJRNoSwrQzZ-d97h_iIyKU5O5R-h6ps3BpfIqLaTk6CwiA0EAMbbZQZV5wNXMOSVIlLUsSjyiGY9Eyx8mMcUaa5P3OgIJicQgB66QixTmbwt03pimLAsqoqXZ6-0HzbF9i-IjYeM35H7JMO2dMqyi7UN9rwdG00CS2Z7W7wM3382aep6fyxcQw-HZaGULWH8=s0-d-e1-ft#https://github.com/notifications/beacon/ASJQXMNDMZH7SXTIQWDP63DZBTUGLA5CNFSM4EJXUIS2YY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOPV2U7PQ.gif>Message ID: @.***>

[sircoderin]

Can we please have an update on this? Me and my friends literally avoid using Element because of the horrifying ring tone. Would it be ok to create a PR ourselves implementing a custom ring sound?

[noideastowork]

Where can I find the notification sounds on macOS so that I can replace them myself?

[0xilly]

Is there any update on this or could the element come out with an official statement that they're not working on fixing this and close the issue so we can move on it's been over six years and it's unacceptable at this point and alternatives were given https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/4500, https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk/pull/10494 and closed without thought. I'm starting to regret the money I've donated to matrix I'm tired of the excuse train please please please fix this already.

[RubensRainelli]

I wonder - do fb messenger/web whatsapp/slack let you configure notif sounds? Or do they just pick a more universally appealing sound?

They use a more appealing one.

The actual notification sound of Element is quite similar to System Error in Linux or Windows or Mac, I don't remember which one.

There should be even more options like multiple different sounds, like:

• reply or direct message and tagging
• @room messages and multiuser messages.