Play a sound or notify when npm install is done

Question

I was thinking , would it be helpful and efficient to get a notification(sound or popup) back after npm finish running a task , a long installation for example . I'm using vscode and running most of my command in the integrated terminal and while waiting for it to finish I ended up spending more time on doing other task that is non-productive.

Income

Perhaps npm install; [search on how to make a sound from bash], e.g. this - ; instead of && since you may want an alert even if it fails. – Industrious

Answer 1

So we can break this down to running npm install, followed by some way of making a sound. According to this thread, a simple beep can be done using: echo -en "\007".

Combine these two, and you get: npm install; echo -en "\007"

The use of ; ensures that the beep is played even if npm install fails (as opposed to && which only runs the beep if the first command is successful). You could also look here for how to start playing a song with VLC: play-only-audio-with-vlc

Industrious

Can we add this such that it is executed after every npm install ? Like a global postinstall script. – Guppy

Unless supported by npm, I doubt it is possible. You could create an alias in that case. – Industrious

Alias sounds like the way to go here. Thanks. – Guppy

Answer 2

If your npm install is part of a task, VSCode 1.72 (Sept. 2022) will offer:

add audio cue for task end and terminal bell

Fixes "Play sound upon completion of build so that users can multi-task (do work in other applications) and know when the build has completed "

Settings audioCues.taskEnded

This has been released to VSCode Insiders yesterday.

Femur

Answer 3

For a slightly different solution there is a npm package named benny-hill:

Play the Benny Hill theme while running another command

e.g.

npx benny-hill npm install

will play Yakety Sax while you're waiting.

Bookcraft

Answer 4

Actually there is a npm package doing exactly what you are asking for:

Literally tells you when a command is done running.

E.g.

npx okimdone npm install

It depends on external speech to text tools like espeak or festival to produce the audio.

Bookcraft

Answer 5

for cmd like Terminals

Your_Command && [System.Media.SystemSounds]::Beep.Play()

Sounds: Beep, Hand, Quetsion, Asterisk, Exclamation

You can also play the raw sound and changes its pitch and duration [console]::beep(1000,500)

Vexed

Answer 6

There are two terminal audio signals that are helpful here:

Accessibility > Signals: Terminal Command Succeeded
Accessibility > Signals: Terminal Command Failed

These are settings you can find in your Setting UI. You will probably need to change the volume, search for "signals volume" in your Settings UI.

Spouse