Windows – “gentle” visual bell in PuTTY

puttysshwindows

So I don't like having the system bell ring when the PuTTY receives a bell control character, so I've set it to "visual bell." This, however, causes the entire window to flash which is quite jarring and annoying. Does anyone know of a "gentle" visual bell that just flashes, say, the outermost column/row, or just the menu bar or something?

Best Answer

There doesn't seem to be such an option. From the command's own help:

4.5.1 ‘Set the style of bell’

This control allows you to select various different actions to occur on a terminal bell:

  • Selecting ‘None’ disables the bell completely. In this mode, the server can send as many Control-G characters as it likes and nothing at all will happen.
  • ‘Make default system alert sound’ is the default setting. It causes the Windows ‘Default Beep’ sound to be played. To change what this sound is, or to test it if nothing seems to be happening, use the Sound configurer in the Windows Control Panel.
  • Visual bell’ is a silent alternative to a beeping computer. In this mode, when the server sends a Control-G, the whole PuTTY window will flash white for a fraction of a second.
  • ‘Beep using the PC speaker’ is self-explanatory.
  • ‘Play a custom sound file’ allows you to specify a particular sound file to be used by PuTTY alone, or even by a particular individual PuTTY session. This allows you to distinguish your PuTTY beeps from any other beeps on the system. If you select this option, you will also need to enter the name of your sound file in the edit control ‘Custom sound file to play as a bell’.

But PuTTY is open source; even if you're not able or inclined to make such a change yourself, you could request it.

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