🔔 Terminal Failure Alert

Plays a sound when your terminal commands fail — so you can stop staring at the screen.

What It Does

FAAH Terminal Alert monitors your VS Code integrated terminal and plays an audio notification whenever a command exits with a non-zero status code (i.e., it failed).

No more switching back to VS Code to check if your long build finished — or worse, if it crashed silently.

Built for:

• Long-running builds and compilations
• Test suites (npm test, pytest, cargo test)
• Package installs
• Docker builds and deployments
• Git operations

Features

Installation

From the VS Code Marketplace:

1. Open VS Code
2. Open Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X)
3. Search for FAAH Terminal Alert
4. Click Install

From a .vsix file:

code --install-extension raghul-tech.faah-terminal-alert-ext-1.0.0.vsix

How to Use

Automatic Detection

The extension activates automatically when VS Code starts. A 🔔 icon appears in the status bar (bottom right). Run any terminal command — if it fails, you'll hear the alert.

Toggle Sound On/Off

• Click the 🔔 bell icon in the status bar
• Or open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) → FAAH Terminal Alert: Toggle Sound
• Or use Ctrl+Alt+F (Cmd+Alt+F on macOS)

Test the Alert

• Click the 🧪 icon in the status bar
• Or Command Palette → FAAH Terminal Alert: Test Sound
• Or use Ctrl+Alt+T (Cmd+Alt+T on macOS)

Debug Mode

• Command Palette → FAAH Terminal Alert: Toggle Debug Logging
• View logs: Output panel (Ctrl+Shift+U) → select FAAH Terminal Alert

Settings

Search for faah-terminal-alert in VS Code Settings (Ctrl+,).

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can customize these in File → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts.

Status Bar Icons

How It Works

The extension uses VS Code's official terminal event APIs to listen for command completion events. When a command exits with a non-zero code, it triggers an audio notification using the operating system's built-in audio capabilities.

• All processing happens locally within VS Code
• No data is collected, stored, or transmitted
• The extension is completely idle when disabled — no background activity of any kind
• Audio playback uses standard OS-level audio — no third-party audio servers required

Note: For reliable exit code detection, PowerShell terminals work best. Git Bash and some custom shells may not report exit codes to VS Code's terminal API consistently.

Troubleshooting

No sound playing?

• Check the status bar — ensure the 🔔 icon shows sound is enabled
• Try Test Sound from the status bar to confirm audio is working
• Check your system volume
• Enable Debug Mode and check the Output panel for details

Not detecting failures?

• Switch to a PowerShell terminal — Git Bash has limited exit code reporting
• Enable Debug Mode to see what events the extension is receiving

Sound not working over SSH / Remote?

• Remote environments typically have no audio device on the local machine
• This is a known limitation of remote development — the sound plays server-side where there is no audio output

Cooldown setting not applying?

• Ensure the value is a number (milliseconds), not a string
• Restart VS Code after changing the setting

Privacy & Security

• ✅ No data collection — the extension does not collect, store, or transmit any information
• ✅ No network access — all operations are entirely local
• ✅ No file modification — the extension only reads terminal events and outputs audio
• ✅ Audio uses OS built-in capabilities — no external audio libraries or servers
• ✅ Fully transparent — source code is publicly available on GitHub

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue to discuss what you'd like to change before submitting a pull request.

• Report a Bug
• Request a Feature
• Contributing Guide
• Code of Conduct

License

MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.

Made for developers who'd rather hear a sound than stare at a terminal.