Terminal Error Sound

A VS Code extension that plays a customizable sound whenever a terminal command fails (exits with a non-zero code or matches common error patterns).

Features

• 🔊 Automatic error detection via shell integration exit codes (preferred) and/or text-pattern matching as a fallback
• 🐚 Works with bash, zsh, PowerShell, and Windows cmd
• 🎵 Custom sounds – use any .wav or .mp3 file
• 🔇 Cooldown timer – prevents repeated sounds within a configurable window (default: 2 seconds)
• 📊 Status bar indicator – shows enabled/disabled state; click to toggle
• 🪵 Logging – detailed debug output in the Terminal Error Sound Output panel

Requirements

Extension Settings

Example settings.json

"terminalErrorSound.enabled": true,
"terminalErrorSound.soundFile": "/home/alice/sounds/error.wav",
"terminalErrorSound.volume": 0.8,
"terminalErrorSound.cooldownMs": 2000,
"terminalErrorSound.customPatterns": ["\\bABORTED\\b", "SIGKILL"]

Commands (Command Palette)

How Error Detection Works

1. Exit-Code Detection (preferred)

VS Code's shell integration feature automatically injects hooks into bash/zsh/PowerShell/cmd that report exit codes after each command. When this is active, onDidEndTerminalShellExecution fires with exitCode. Any value ≠ 0 is treated as a failure.

Shell integration is enabled by default in VS Code ≥ 1.85 for the supported shells. If a shell doesn't report codes, the extension falls back to pattern detection.

2. Pattern Detection (fallback)

Scans raw terminal output for these built-in patterns (and any custom ones you add):

• command not found
• not recognized as an internal or external
• error
• failed
• exception
• fatal
• permission denied
• no such file or directory
• SyntaxError, Traceback
• npm ERR!
• Cannot find module

Installation & Development

Install dependencies

cd terminal-error-sound
npm install

Run in VS Code (F5)

1. Open the terminal-error-sound folder in VS Code.
2. Press F5 (or Run → Start Debugging).
3. An Extension Development Host window opens with the extension loaded.
4. Open a terminal in that window and run a failing command (e.g. false in bash/zsh, or exit 1 in PowerShell).

Package with vsce

# Install vsce if needed
npm install -g @vscode/vsce

# Package
vsce package

# This produces terminal-error-sound-1.0.0.vsix
# Install locally:
code --install-extension terminal-error-sound-1.0.0.vsix

Note: You must set a valid publisher in package.json before publishing to the VS Code Marketplace.

Troubleshooting

• Open the Output panel (View → Output) and select Terminal Error Sound to see detailed logs.
• If no sound plays on Linux, ensure one of paplay, aplay, ffplay, or mpg123 is installed.
• If exit-code detection isn't firing, check that VS Code shell integration is active: run echo $VSCODE_SHELL_INTEGRATION in the terminal (should not be empty for bash/zsh).

License

MIT