I’m currently running BigLinux which is Arch based and seems like no matter what I do I cannot get notification sounds. I have asked on their forums and have received no response for what I’m sure is something they did on their end. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Thanks
I’m assuming since Plasma is a KDE someone here has an idea on how to fix the notification sounds.
In System Settings > Audio, are notification sounds muted?
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Thanks to the BigLinux devs I found the checkbox and now have my navigation sounds. Now that said one quick question. I read that with Plasma 6.0 it’s going to be easier to enable system sounds in general. Is that true, and if so will the sound scheme settings finally not be buried as deep as they are now? Thanks
The sound scheme settings don’t exist at all in Plasma 5. 
In Plasma 6 they’ll be in Colors & Themes > System Sounds. There’s also a chance we’ll move them into Audio before the final release.
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They do exist but with the exception of the navigation sound they don’t work unless individually configured under navigation / configure. Nice to know that with 6 they’ll be in a more apt place in settings. Thanks for the info.
I’m using Kubuntu 24.04 with Plasma 5.27.11 and I’m trying to get notification sounds working. Some work, others don’t.
- Login plays the specified sound, so that’s OK
- Incoming email will show a pop-up and does play the sound that is specified in “Notification” (OK)
But:
- I cannot get the emptying trash sound to work. (And I know the sound file itself is good)
- Push notifications coming from my browsers (Firefox or Brave) show the pup-up, but I cannot get the sounds to work
See here my settings in Plasma:
I hope you guys can help me to get this working!
I have discovered something that might give a clue to why the sound on some notifications isn’t working.
When I run this command, I can monitor notifications in the terminal:
dbus-monitor “interface=‘org.freedesktop.Notifications’” | grep --line-buffered “member=Notify|string”
Looking at the output when notifications arrive, the pop-up notifications that do have sound (e.g. email, Signal) have as first string “Plasma Workspace”, suggesting that they are indeed managed by Plasma and therefore sounds can be enabled, changed etc as they should.
The pop-up notifications that do not have sound (e.g. web browser push notifications), have as first string “Firefox”, “Brave” etc and not “Plasma Workspace”. Therefore, they are probably configured and managed somewhere else.
Does anybody knows if there is a config file somewhere that manages these notifications that are ignored by the Plasma settings? On other Ubuntu based distro like Mint Cinnamon, these notifications come with sound, so…
@Halcyon, I believe there is some confusing with the concept of “Notifications” here, as in System Settings → Notifications - this configuration screen is about the Plasma implementation of the FreeDesktop.org Desktop Notifications Specification while the “System Notifications” and “Application Settings…” buttons on top of the screen is about configuring how specific applications create notifications to be displayed by a notification framework.
Specifically, Plasma will not play a sound when a notification is shown if the application did not specify a sound to be played (as per the spec). The System Notifications panel allows you to specify that when certain Plasma event happen, Plasma will specify a notification sound when sending the notification, therefor causing the Plasma notifications implementation to play it.
Some applications - notably KDE and Qt applications - register the type of notifications they can send with the system and therefor you can go into System Settings → Notifications → Application Settings and tell the applications what settings to use for such notifications, e.g. which sound to ask the notification system to play.
Firefox, as an application, neither register notification types with the system, nor sends a sound specification with its notifications - so you cannot cause website notifications to play a sound when used through Firefox (also Google Chrome for that matter).
Regarding the empty trash sound - I can reproduce the problem and it seems like a bug - you will also not get a notification pop-up showing if you configure System Notifications to do so. You should probably open a ticket about it in bugs.kde.org.
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@guss77 Thanks for your reply!
So if I understand it correctly, in Plasma there isn’t really a way to have Firefox or Chrome play a sound along with the text popup, as is the case with e.g. Cinnamon desktop.
Or, one would have to install a separate notification daemon (like Dunst), but that would probably interfere with the Plasma built-in notification daemon.
There’s a Firefox extension called Notification Sound which may help with the Firefox issue.
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