Page 279 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Editing a theme’s sound settings

Windows plays beeps and bloops to celebrate various occasions: closing a

program, yanking out a USB drive, signing in or out, getting a new fax, and
so on. You can turn these sounds on or off, or choose new sounds for these
events.

Sounds, too, are part of a theme. To edit the suite of sounds that goes with
your currently selected theme, open the Themes screen and hit Sounds. Or,
if you’re starting from scratch, type sounds into the taskbar search box; in

the results list, choose “Change system sounds.”

See the list of Program Events (Figure 4-4)? A speaker icon represents the
occasions when a sound will play. Double-click a sound (or click the Test

button) to see what it sounds like.

Or, if you click the name of some computer event (say, Low Battery Alert),
you can make these adjustments:

Remove a sound from the event by choosing “(None)” from the
Sounds drop-down list.

Change an assigned sound, or add a sound to an event that
doesn’t have one, by clicking Browse and choosing a new sound

file from the list in the Open dialog box.

Tip
When you click the Browse button, Windows opens the Local Disk (C:) Windows Media
folder, which contains the .wav files that provide sounds. If you drag .wav files into this Media
folder, they become available for use as Windows sound effects. Many people download .wav files
from the internet and stash them in the Media folder to make their computing experience quirkier,
more fun, and richer in Austin Powers sound snippets.

When you select a sound, its filename appears in the Sounds drop-down
list. Click the Test button to the right of the box to hear the sound.

Desktop icon settings