How to get rid of the application menu sound effects?

[berlioz]

I'm using Kubuntu 20.10 on an E580 and I have disabled all notification and system sounds, but I cannot get rid of the weird clicking sound the application menu makes, when I hover over the categories. Any idea on how to disable that?

Edit: Correction, I run 20.04 LTS.

[claydoh]

20.10 is EOL, just fyi

May have to dig up an old iso, and see. I can't find any setting that will turn on clicking sounds, on *anything", let alone the application launcher, so I can't recall when this sort of thing went away.
You probably need to look at Notification settings for Kwin, Plasmashell, and the like, perhaps?

Since there are no longer such sounds in Plasma, it might be worth upgrading to a more recent, and supported Kubuntu version, perhaps ?


OK, looking at my 20.04 system, Plasma 5.18, I cannot find a setting to turn this on/off as well, so I don't know how it is happening in Plasma 5.19


Do you have any other desktops installed, that might use click sounds?
I vaguely recall this sort of thing happening way way back in the day, maybe KDE era.

[berlioz]

Oh, I'm running 20.04, of course, my bad. No idea why I wrote 20.10, I only install the LTS versions. It's not even an upgrade, I straight up installed it from the iso when I bought the laptop.

I haven't installed any other desktop or any weird stuff, just some applications from the repositories. I only run two widgets: Display Brightness Control and Notes. The only things I really did was change the application launcher to "menu" and change the icon. The sound is not very loud, but it still annoys me, I work in a very quiet enviroment. It also sounds like it is 15 years old at least.

When I installed kubuntu, I deactivates all notification sounds, muted notifications and then I deactivated the notification widget itself.
In order to check them, I reactivated it right now and a lot of sounds were back for some reason (although still muted), maybe a recent update. I deactivated them again, but nothing changed. The menu sound is still there.

[oshunluvr]

I didn't know there were menu sounds. Annoying.

Maybe it's left over cache or something? Try selecting an alternative app menu and using it once or twice, then back to you preferred choice. Maybe it will just go away.

[berlioz]

Maybe it's left over cache or something? Try selecting an alternative app menu and using it once or twice, then back to you preferred choice. Maybe it will just go away.

Okay, tried it. The other choices don't have the sound.
After switching back to "menu" the icon was back to standard and my other changes reverted also (e.g. favourites), but the sound remained.

[claydoh]

Still weird. I can't get any click sounds on any application launcher alternative on 20.04, even some third party addon ones

[berlioz]

Maybe the sound is too quiet on your system?
Just to clarify, I get the sound when hovering from one menu item to the other, not when I click.

Does anyone know where such sound files would be stored? Maybe I can find and delete them or replace them with empty ones.

[claydoh]

Maybe the sound is too quiet on your system?

Headphones, cranked up. No sounds anywhere, hovering, clicking, staring angrily, or even bribing.

Look in /usr/share/sounds/ for system level sounds. There could be a ~./local/share/sounds, and of course it theoretically could be kept anywhere.

[jglen490]

Yep, same here on 20.04. I cranked up the speakers, and no clicking sounds from anywhere on the menu.

[oshunluvr]

OK, what about having top running in a terminal, then watch the terminal while moving the mouse and causing the clicks. Maybe some application will jump to the top and we can isolate what's making the sound. Some application has to be playing a sound file.

**Never mind. I have a sound notification on when toggle Caps Lock. It does show in top. It will probably just be a plasmashell action.

If you could at least identify the sound file that's making the noise, you could at least zero it out so no sound would occur,

[berlioz]

I don't have ~./local/share/sounds, but I looked in /usr/share/sounds/ and listened to all the sound files, none came even close to the clicking sound.

Running top while hovering just gives "plasmashell", not sure that helps.

I checked my plasma style and it is set to "air", but changing it to something different didn't solve the problem. The global theme is "kubuntu".

I tried to capture the sound with audacity by setting the recording device to "pulse", but I only got noise.

[Snowhog]

Another path to try is creating a new user, logging out and logging in with the new user. See if this anomaly repeats with the new user. If it doesn't, then the problem is somewhere in your normal users /home directory; a hidden settings or configuration file(s).

Test and report back.

[berlioz]

Excellent idea!
I created a new user (without admin privileges like my main account), switched to it and only did one thing: changed the application launcher to "menu" by right-clicking it to show alternatives.
The clicking sounds while hovering from menu point to menu point were there.

Since I couldn't capture the sound with audacity I tried muting everything via key combination (Fn+F1 for my laptop). The sound was still there.

Oh and because I'm starting to doubt my own sanity I gave my laptop to my SO to ckeck whether they hear it, too. They did.

I guess my next step would be to reinstall everything, but that seems a lot of work just to see it's still there.

[Snowhog]

A reinstall to see if it's still present isn't necessary. Run a Live version of Kubuntu and see if the sound is present. If it is, well, then you've got something quite unique.

[Fred47]

Maybe some where in the BIOS?