The disappearing art of audio cues

Set your phone to flash its light when a call or message arrives.

On the topic of disappearing audio queues: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/03/20/cbs-news-radio-network-ending-wbbm-aving-wbbm-and-hundreds-of-affiliates-in-the-dark/

Ours alternated “fire fire fire… fire fire fire” with the beeps

So many lava lamps. I also bought 2 recently. Inspired by Techmoan.

Would you be willing to share your curated collection of notification sounds with us on patreon?

When I saw the railroad signal device, my immediate first thought was Magic Kingdom speakers in Tomorrowland. ;-) https://allears.net/blogs/jackspence/Speakers%2015.jpg

Great video! Funniest thing is that I'm watching this on a flight.

Did I hear a little bit of the Living with the Land audio track at the end?

Sigh. I worked for BlackBerry in 2007 and I got my hands on an unreleased beta, it had a hierarchical notification system that was AMAZING. I've never used anything as good. It was simpler times, but it worked so so well for email and text and BBM.

I'm not sure if this was a goal of yours, but with your own sound design (particularly NOT using an actual fire alarm) , this video did NOT freak my dog the hell out. 👍

I recognized that railroad crossing signal as soon as I saw it, but it took me a minute to place where I'd seen it. Unsurprisingly, it was at a railroad crossing. I had no idea what it was, though, so thanks for that! I'm one of those people who's grown to loathe notification sounds, but it's like you said - it's because they're all AWFUL. I did once design my own IM sound 20+ years ago, and thought about doing that for an alarm sound on my phone, but it turns out Google, in their infinite wisdom, won't let you use the "volume ramps up slowly" feature on custom alarm sounds. Yeah, I probably could make a really long audio file that does that itself, but I was just so frustrated with the user-hostile nonsense that I just plain gave up. I miss vibration notifications a fair amount, too, but I deal with that by simply not caring very much about notifications. Only my texting apps are allowed to notify me at all, and if I miss one for a few minutes, no big deal. In the extremely rare case when I'm waiting for someone to get back to me about something urgent I MIGHT turn the sound on, but I can't even remember the last time I did that. Nothing in my life is that urgent.

I thought all railroad crossings here only had electromechanical bells (they look like a mushroom at the top of the pole). But after taking a look on street view, turns out that one* (of 8 in my city, in Sweden) had a gotten an "upgrade" to a speaker. It's a small box, like 10 cm cubed, on top of the pole**. Out of curiosity I followed the railway line for 40-60 km in either direction. And out of the 40ish railway crossings 4 had speakers** (I saw more crossings without any signals at all). Two of them had completely new equipment, and one of them had the speakers pointed in the "opposite direction" (The speaker was on the right side pole, pointing backwards/sideways towards the left/opposing lane [basically past the railway]). (*I pass it once, maybe twice a week. And have to stop for a train maybe 2-4 times a year [and for some reason I tend to arrive after the signals have stopped], so I don't think I've heard it yet) (**I saw two slightly different types of speakers, but both roughly the same size).

Boy howdy would you appreciate the panel alarms in a nuclear power plant. Every panel (at least in the plants I came from) have different sounds/patterns so as soon as an alarm came in you knew exactly which panel had an alarm come in- even if other panels were in alarm.

My favorite airplane chime: the "I keep accidentally hitting the flight attendant call button because for some reason the seat manufacturer moved it next to the volume button on the in-flight entertainment" chime. For a little while, I had a Tasker automation which would switch my phone to silent for a minute after a text came in. I like Google's implementation of "cooldown mode" for vibration because it distinguishes additional texts (people! Compose one thought and then press send!) from something new. While I'm here... I'm with you on, "we need more efficient cars first, because it's going to get us much closer to where we want to be, much faster, than parallel efforts to undo the better part of a century's land use decisions which will fundamentally affect the balance of wealth and power in the United States, and may still have some big unanswered questions about how we do this when suburban street grids in many cases are fundamentally incompatible with good transit, and how do we re-centralize offices, all while encouraging mixed use and adaptive reuse." And that we probably don't want the people who are most car-dependent to be the ones suffering while we make those transitions, because they're likely to be relatively poor to begin with and pricing them out of mobility is not a progressive thing to do, even if the broader aims are good. I am not on the side of "the car has destroyed everything" and more on the side of "the car has created some tradeoffs which, while on the whole have probably provided certain economic opportunities and ways of life that were desirable from a social equality standpoint, i.e., not just rich people could afford what would have been called 'country estates," they have produced some extreme bad outcomes in city centers and environmentally which require rebalancing our transportation infrastructure with an emphasis on drawing people toward mass transit through making it better" than urbanist Blue Sky or urbanist YouTube. But... and if you're still with me, thanks - the term "car brained" precludes conversation in favor of the "car evil and you're now stupid because of it" extreme. It's hard to have a productive conversation with someone who accuses you of being brain damaged, even as a rhetorical flourish. Maybe this is just a pet peeve from someone who has lived in the urban planning/transportation planning for a long time, but as you've mentioned before, urbanist social media has a tendency toward condescension and an "all-or-nothing" attitude. As I consider you an educator who likes to reframe problems to help people learn, I thought I'd mention it.

I heard your Living with the Land reference at 22:57

Alec, not one video goes by where I wish I didn't subscribe or where you didn't hit the mark, regardless of the subject. Every video I literally watch and learn intently, with just the right amount of sarcasm. Many thanks for the great content you produce.

You could have made a joke about stealing it from a railroad crossing near your home. With a "just kidding" followup. Great video. I worked on emergency alert systems in US Embassies. We posted charts to visually describe the alert sounds and what to do (things like "Duck and Cover" and "All Clear"). Eventually we went to a recorded voice telling people what to do along with the tones. Often recorded in multiple languages.

Another awesome video, Alec! You'd be interested in the history of the Aussie pedestrian push button, and the clever use of audio and vibration, where it also adjusts its volume depending on background noise: https://theconversation.com/sublime-design-the-pb-5-pedestrian-button-26232

You're giving me an interesting idea to make some of the notifications for home events — I use a few of those already through Google Home devices, but those are… slightly less than reliable and a lot more noisy than they should be as they first notify of the Cast mode enabled. But maybe I can put a few simpler ESP32-based buzzers around the house where I would *need* those notifications. Hmmm.

07:08 I was going to guess that noise was the Telephone "Engaged" tone for the US. Not a fire alert. Maybe the phone speaker and low volume I'm listening with remove some of the urgency.

During my youth, in the Netherlands they also started replacing all bells on railway crossings with electronic ones, one of the reasons mentioned was that the classic bells (as far as I know they were actually American-style, like a lot of the railway safety devices from after the war) started "too suddenly" and the new electronic ones now fade in. But they still sound fake... BTW: they look completely different, it's just a black box with a speaker inside. In Switzerland, where I live now, as long as I've been here, there have always been electronic "bells" that don't sound like a bell at all, but hey, there aren't nearly as much railroad crossings here as in the flat Netherlands... Too keep the railway topic: the implementation of "audible door signalization" in Europe to my opinion went completely in the way of "overstimulation": the European Railway Agency decided to regulate and standardize the beeps a train door should make... Now before the door is released for opening, it should make a specified, very annoying sound and the interpretation of some railway companies (especially the SBB in Switzerland) is that it should be "as loud as possible", possibly causing hearing damage... Before it usually was silent, the door mechanics usually made enough noise to notify you it was opening. And for closing, it makes a very nerving "beebeebeebeebeep" (which is in many cases also earshattering loud!), and as with modern trains, the door closes automatically after when the door opening is empty for a few seconds, on larger stations, you tend to have a huge ocean of "beebeebeebeebeebeep" going around, having no clue anymore where there could be a danger... At least, when I wrote the ERA about this they acknowledged and changed the rules so that doors should not beep anymore if the train is not going to depart, but until all trains have been adopted, will probably take years... And for the phone alerts: yes, I am the person being irritated if somebody is in a public space, texting and with every message there's that loud "ping" or whatever... Please switch it off, I'm gratefull to Apple that they put from the first iPhone on a dedicated switch for putting it into silent mode, it's replaced now by a button but in essence still the same! Never had to change anything there because of a SW update!

The noises got out of hand at some point - I think the designers stopped thinking about how their device fits the environment it's used in. Also, if the device has ability to make sound, they have the urge to use it far too much. I don't want to list everything i am annoyed with, but I hate how everything sounds like fire alarm these days, from kitchen appliances to crosswalks and train doors.

I’m exactly old enough AND young enough that I thought I had cracked a secret code that nobody else was aware of on the TV show “Emergency”. The tones that sounded when Rampart’s rescue squad got a call was different than the tones when a different fire station got calls for their engines. It hit me one day watching the show that the “BAA BEE BOO” was for Rampart, and the "BOO BEE BEE” and the “BEE BOO BAA” were for others, so John Gage and Roy DeSoto would go back to restocking their medical kit. 🤣 The audio cue I wish cars had were different blinker sounds if you’ve half pressed for three blinks and a different sound if you’ve full pressed for constant blinks. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to cancel the lane change signal that had just cancelled itself, so I’ve actually signaled a lane change in the opposite direction instead. 🤬

"Everythinhg sucks now...but it could suck a lot less." That's all I want, for things to just suck less...except for vacuum cleaners.

I've always thought you'd one day do a video on SELCAL and the SCU dispatch tones heard in shows like Emergency One.

Your gross vocal cords are modulating the sound coming from your gross lungy breathy bits :P

If you want to hop down a neat rabbit hole check out the SBB chimes used by the Swiss Federal Railway system. There are three of them and they change depending upon which part of the country you are in.

I am grateful for your "weird brain." I learned a lot today.

Okay, so maybe I am just dense, but I have not been able to figure out how to set different tones for different contacts on an apple, and it drives me nuts! I know on a past phone I could do that. I also think a lot of the buzzers on phones have gotten weaker. I haven't really been able to reliably feel a notifaction for years, and depend on the sound. This is especially bad in loud environments. Loved this and how the video was put together. I particularly liked your little bit on the gmail notification issues!

I've worked for the railroad for 10 years an never knew that was drain pipe from Menards

Rant: I used to work at a big tech company (now I work at a medium sized one). On my team at least, the higher-ups only really paid attention to the tech side. So the project managers had free reign to do stuff like giving the UX people a bunch of tedious work on a long shot idea before analysis showed it wouldn't work (because they were only concerned with owning impactful projects and not the UX people's job satisfaction). So the UX people assigned to our team all quit, and the higher-ups were somehow surprised and had to hire contractors to fill the roles. My point being, it doesn't surprise me that big tech gets this stuff wrong when a lot of them don't respect it.

I miss the days of customizing the appearance, sounds, fonts, cursors, etc. on my PC when the first smartphones came around we were already loosing those customization options everywhere and in the past 15-20 years it’s started to feel like rebellion just to want a custom ring tone or background image that doesn’t just tell everyone around you that you are an iOS or Android user. Maybe not the main point of your video, but now that the computer is in my phone, watch, car I want my control back. This feels related to the right to repair argument.

My new ringtone is just Alec saying "Airplane Bing Bongs" over and over again

You probably did not have time to address it, although you alluded to it. Most electronic alert sounds from electronic devices are pure tones (single frequency with no harmonics) and thus fail to deliver directional queues to the human ear. A real life bell ding has lots of harmonics and associated tones. That is why you can't find the smoke detector with the dying battery. The fancy computer in your pocket can pretty faithfully reproduce a true bell ding, but as you said the folks that choose the sounds are too lazy or don't understand the problem. I worked through some of the same annoyingly difficult process you did to get a true bell sound for a text notification. Therefore, I know when I receive a text and I know which direction to go look for my phone. I enjoyed the weird in this video, keep up the good work !

The irony is that because video games have proper sound designers on staff, these kinds of audio cues continue to be handled very well in games such as to alert low health or gaining levels or whatnot. Also, the elevator thing... I live on the 13th floor of an apartment building with elevators that have both the single/double chime thing and illuminated green up arrows and red down arrows... and 90% of the time when an elevator arrives with people already on it, the person getting on will sincerely ask "Going up?" or "Going down?", DESPITE being given TWO indicators as to the direction of travel: Chimes AND coloured lights! :P

You know where an LLM would legitimately help the notification situation on my phone? If I could put key words or phrases into the “screen unknown callers” functionality that both iOS and Android have and if the robot on the other end (or unfortunately employed human) uses those words or phrases silently block the number and delete the voicemail. The phone is not screening unknown callers, it’s collecting a voicemail and making me do it. Although implementing that would go against AI’s mission to say that we’re making the user experience better while actually making it worse.

Hello! My first time commenting here and this video resonated. I have a "ringtone" that's a simple beep because I don't want to be obnoxious AND I don't want only vibration. I think it would be fun to mention the rhythm of SOS or how the "mission impossible" theme uses the Morse Code patterns for M and I. Questions I had after watching: what do those airline chimes mean (or is it not consistent?), and what is your system for sounds/notifications that you've made work given the limitations of what Android can do? Also fun fact, you can at least set a mac to announce the time on the hour or more often under the "announce the time" option. Lastly, and only if you want this sort of feedback, not sure you need the clip of testing the board with speakers (it doesn't add much to the prior clips) or the tangent about that Gmail account

Oh I still customize notification tones and set per-person tones, too! People think I'm nuts because I know who's texting me without looking at my watch.

Let me just say that I -adore- that you addressed temporal 4! It needs to be more widely known and supported by more alarm signal models. SO many 'horn-strobes' for fire systems only know temporal 3, which is good because they -do- need that. But with the list of systems and detection devices that support CO these days, it appalls me how few of them support temporal 4 as well! I'm a long time NICET certified alarm systems technician, and I've worked with a lot of brands across thousands of commercial settings (even hospitals and prisons, ask me how they are similar some time). Yet temporal 4 languishes in the 'should' section of the code, not 'must'. (For those who read NFPA recreationally, you know the significance of that difference.)

Very interesting topic! I love the design of that "bell" too, it's the type of industrial minimalistic design that really speaks to me (I could start ranting about the shape and design of modern or fancy streetlights that become visible because flashy and decorative while they should be -as audio cues- unobtrusive, i.e. streetlight-shaped). As I live outside of the USA, I was not familiar with that design and wanted to see it, I was able to find it on Google Maps. That's the link, in case someone else is interested: https://maps.app.goo.gl/SFYMWHCCvYBCkkHk7

Oh and while I'm here, there are some really interesting case studies where a lot of deaths in hospitals have been caused by poor sound design. I'm forgetting the details but essentially if all the life saving equipment makes too much noise for mundane issues, nurses train themselves to silence rather than troubleshoot. Almost certainly something I heard about on a podcast, probably 99% Invisible or Radio Lab

I was hoping you'd also list things like a lot of cities (around me at least) have a standardized sound design for whether the east-west or north-south cross walk signal is on. I think it's chirps for east-west and beeps for north-south.

My father in law once complained that he had no idea what each noise his phone was making actually meant. So I made these. https://github.com/jrconlin/ringtones In case anyone else might want them.