Making Your Terminal Sound Like Fun
Bundling 101 optional sound packs just makes me giggle.
Hey folks!
Quick story about a feature that started simple and spiraled into something ridiculous in the best way — notification sounds for YEN.
What began as “let users pick a system sound for notifications” turned into a much larger project with over 1,700 individual sounds covering everything from classic RTS games to Monty Python, Game of Thrones, and the Wilhelm Scream.
You can even upload your own custom sounds, if you want. All optional, of course.
The Original Problem I Was Trying to Solve
YEN has four notification types:
System — Whenever a native event or session is complete.
Chat — when someone messages you in the global chat.
Mail — when new Gmail arrives.
Calendar — when you have an upcoming event.
Originally, they all used the same system sound. That works, but it’s not great. When you hear a ping, you have to check the banner to know what just happened. Was that an email? A chat message? A calendar reminder?
The fix seemed obvious: Let users pick different sounds for each service.
Chat gets one sound. Mail gets another. Calendar gets a third. And customize the system one to your heart’s desire as well. Over time, my ears have learned the difference and it’s making me even faster and more aware of what’s going on in my Terminal. I mean, that’s what we’re all about, right?
Speed. Problem solved. Now, it’s even more fun.
Sound Packs That Make The Terminal Great Again
I started small. Four packs:
Classic RTS — Age of Empires, StarCraft, Command & Conquer.
Retro Arcade — Pac-Man, Tetris, old-school coin-op bleeps.
Sci-Fi Terminal — Beeps, boops, Star Trek door whooshes.
Meme Lord — Bazinga, “It’s over 9000”, the metal pipe sound.
StarCraft — SCV, Siege Tank, Battlecruiser, Medic, Firebat, Science Vessel.
WarCraft — Orc Peon, Human Peasant, Jaina Proudmore, Corrupted Arthas.
Age of Empires II — Taunts, Age of Mythology villagers.
Command & Conquer — Red Alert Soviet Soldier, Generals GLA Worker, Yuri, Kirov Airship.
And Counter-Strike, Valorant, Fortnite, TF2 Engineer, Civilization, SimCity, Halo, Mortal Kombat, Dark Souls, Witcher, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, Ocarina of Time, Skyrim, and 14 packs of Movies and TV themes like:
Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, Brooklyn Nine Nine
The Office (Michael Scott), Parks and Rec (Ron Swanson), Futurama, Seinfeld
The Sopranos, The IT Crowd, Archer, Star Trek (Worf)
Princess Bride, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
And much, much more. It’s ~88 MB total and you can download and remove it to clear up space as you’d like. And it just feels magical. It’s the difference between software that respects your time and software that makes you work for every feature.
Honestly, boot one up and tell me that you don’t crack a smile. I’m waiting.
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