If you work in the Mac Terminal or iTerm2 programs, there’s these annoying beep alerts that you hear repeatedly in various conditions like:

• Hitting the tab key for auto completion.
• Reaching the end of cursor movements.
• Reaching the end of scroll (vim) in a file.
• etc.

Under extensive workloads the high occurrence of these alert bells can cause some real frustration. Especially when there are a bunch of folks in an office popping up the same bell sound collectively.

Let’s fix it as I’m sure turning off the speaker is not exactly the desired solution.

macOS 12 UPDATE: After upgrading to Monterey, the sound alerts ain’t that irritating anymore. They’re less frequent or more sparse in nature now, so I’ve personally decided to leave them on.

Terminal

If you’re using the Terminal program:

1. Go to Terminal > Preferences > Profiles > Advanced.
2. Disable the option Audible bell under the Bell section.
3. Bonus: Disable Visual bell if you want to.

iTerm2

If you’re using the iTerm2 program like me:

1. Go to iTerm2 > Preferences > Profiles > Terminal.
2. Enable the Silence bell option under Notifications.
3. Bonus: Disable Show bell icon in tabs if you want to.

Hope that helps!