Faah Sound: Audio Fail Notification for Terminal Errors
Faah Sound is a premium, lightweight, and hilarious VS Code extension that plays the instant classic "faah!" sound effect whenever a terminal command fails (returns a non-zero exit code).
Keep debugging lighthearted and never miss a failed background command or build task again!
🚀 Features
🔊 Instant Audio Feedback: Hear a quick, funny "faah!" immediately when a terminal command exits with an error.
💻 Cross-Platform Compatibility: Native out-of-the-box support for macOS, Windows, and Linux without requiring external audio player packages.
🎵 Custom Sound Effects: Easily customize your workflow by specifying an absolute file path to any local audio file (.mp3, .wav, .aiff, etc.).
🛡️ Cooldown Protection: Smart anti-spam mechanism prevents the sound from playing multiple times if errors trigger in rapid succession (e.g., watch mode builds).
⚙️ Configuration
You can easily adjust the settings via the VS Code Settings UI (Preferences -> Settings -> search for Faah Sound):
Setting
Type
Default
Description
faahSound.enabled
boolean
true
Enable or disable playing the failure sound effect.
faahSound.customSoundPath
string
""
Absolute path to a custom sound file (.mp3, .wav, .aiff) to play instead of the default "faaah.mp3".
faahSound.cooldownMs
number
1000
Cooldown in milliseconds to prevent repetitive sounds from rapid-fire errors.
🛠️ Commands
Faah Sound: Play Test Sound: Manually play the sound to test your audio output levels and verify native system playback configuration.
📋 Requirements & Troubleshooting
VS Code Shell Integration
This extension relies on VS Code's built-in Shell Integration feature to detect when command executions start and finish.
Shell integration is enabled by default in modern VS Code versions.
If command failures do not trigger the sound, ensure shell integration is active in your terminal. You can check this by seeing if a small blue circle or indicator appears next to commands in your terminal prompt.
Make sure terminal.integrated.shellIntegration.enabled is set to true in your settings.json.
💻 Local Development
Clone or open this repository folder in VS Code.
Run npm install to load dev dependencies.
Press F5 to start a new Extension Development Host window.
Run any command that fails (e.g. exit 1 or ls non_existent_file) in the terminal of the new window, and enjoy the sound!
📦 Packaging
To package this extension into a .vsix bundle for manual installation:
Install VS Code Extension Manager: npm install -g @vscode/vsce
