Never miss a failed command again. EchoFail plays a sound when any terminal command exits with an error — pick from 5 built-in tones, record your own, or type text-to-speech. Like a dolphin's sonar for your terminal.
Installation
Launch VS Code Quick Open (Ctrl+P), paste the following command, and press enter.
Like a dolphin's sonar for your terminal. Never miss a failed command again.
EchoFail plays a sound whenever a terminal command exits with a non-zero exit code in VS Code. Choose from 5 built-in sounds, record your own with your microphone, or type any text and have it spoken aloud via text-to-speech.
Features
Instant error detection — automatically plays a sound when any terminal command fails
Record custom sounds — use your microphone to record a personal error alert
Text-to-Speech — type any phrase (e.g. "build failed") and generate a spoken sound
Sound Manager UI — a full webview panel to browse, preview, select, record, and manage sounds
Quick Select — pick a sound instantly from the Command Palette
Custom WAV support — point to any .wav file on your system
Cross-platform — works on Windows, macOS, and Linux
Zero config — works out of the box with sensible defaults
Getting Started
Install the extension
Open VS Code's integrated terminal
Run a failing command (e.g. exit 1)
Hear the error sound!
That's it. No configuration needed.
Commands
Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and search for:
Command
Description
EchoFail: Open Sound Manager
Opens the full sound management UI
EchoFail: Select Sound
Quick-pick a sound from a dropdown
EchoFail: Test Sound
Play the current error sound
EchoFail: Toggle On/Off
Enable or disable error sounds
Sound Manager
The Sound Manager is a built-in webview panel where you can:
Preview any sound before selecting it
Select a sound as your active error alert
Record a custom sound using your microphone
Generate TTS sounds by typing any text
Delete custom recordings or TTS sounds you no longer need
Open it from the Command Palette: EchoFail: Open Sound Manager
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
terminalErrorSound.enabled
true
Enable or disable the error sound
terminalErrorSound.volume
80
Volume (0–100). Effective on macOS; Windows/Linux use system volume
terminalErrorSound.selectedSound
classic-beep
Active sound ID. Use the Sound Manager to change this
terminalErrorSound.customSoundPath
""
Absolute path to a custom .wav file (overrides selectedSound)
Requirements
VS Code 1.93+ (uses the Shell Integration API)
Terminal shell integration must be enabled (on by default)
How It Works
EchoFail uses VS Code's onDidEndTerminalShellExecution API to detect when a command finishes with a non-zero exit code. When an error is detected, it plays the selected sound using the system's native audio player (SoundPlayer on Windows, afplay on macOS, paplay/aplay on Linux).
