With default settings, when a new notification arrives, Windows 10 displays a small toast notification at the bottom-right corner of the screen, and simultaneously plays a sound to alert you about the notification. The notification appears for a few seconds before automatically disappearing from the screen.

While it’s a neat feature, many users prefer to see only the visual notification and don’t want Windows 10 to play the sound. This is because, unless the speaker volume is really low, the notification sound might irritate you when you are in the middle of some serious stuff. Likewise, while watching a movie on your PC, you probably don’t like to hear the notification sounds.

One way to turn off the notification sounds is to mute the PC’s speaker but that doesn’t make sense as it will mute all sounds coming from the speaker. The other way is to configure Quite Hours feature but since the feature turns off both visual and audio notifications, turning on Quite Hours is not a good idea as well.

If you are one of those users who prefer to see the toast notification without the sound, you can stop Windows 10 from playing the notification sound whenever there is a new notification.

Methods to turn off notification sounds in Windows 10

Luckily, there are options in Windows 10 change the default settings of notifications and you can disable the notification sound with ease. You can either turn off notification sound for all apps and various Windows alerts or turn off the notification sound for a specific app. For instance, if you receive tens of new emails every hour, you probably want to turn off the notification sound only for the Mail app.

And when the notification sound is disabled, Windows 10 will continue to show the notifications but without playing the sound.

Method 1 – turn off notification sound for all or specific apps

Method 2 – turn off all kind of notification sounds

Method 3 – turn off notification sounds for third-party desktop programs

Method 1 of 3

Turn off notification sounds for specific or all apps

Step 1: Open Settings app. This can be done by either clicking or tapping Settings name in the Start menu or simultaneously pressing Windows logo and I keys on the keyboard.

Step 2: Once the Settings app is launched, click or tap the first icon labelled System (Display, notifications, apps, power).

Step 3: Click or tap Notifications and actions.

Step 4: Scroll down, under Show notifications from these apps, tap or click on an app name that you want to turn off the notification sound for. For instance, if you don’t want to hear the notification sound for Mail app, click or tap on it.

Step 5: Finally, turn off the option named Play a sound when a notification arrives. That’s it! From now onwards, when a notification arrives, Windows 10 will only display the visual notification without playing the sound.

If you want to turn off the notification sound for all apps, tap or click on each app one after another and then turn off Play a sound when a notification arrives option.

Method 2 of 3

Turn off all notification sounds under Control Panel

This is the ideal way if you prefer to turn off all kind of notification sounds on your Windows 10 PC.

Step 1: Open Control Panel by typing Control Panel in Start menu search box and then pressing Enter key.

Step 2: Change the View by to Small icons, and then click or tap Sound.

Step 3: Switch to Sounds tab. Under Sound scheme section, select No sounds, and then click or tap Apply button.

As you can see in the above picture, you can configure or turn off the notification sound for a specific event by selecting an event from the list. You can either change the default audio (sound) selected for an event or create a new sound scheme.

Method 3 of 3

Stop third-party programs from playing notification sound

Even when the notification sound is turned off, some third-party programs might continue to play the notification sound. For instance, the FeedDemon application plays the notification sound whenever there is a new feed.

Most of the desktop programs that play a notification sound also offer an option to turn off the notification sound. You need to open the program’s settings to turn off the notification sound.

Enjoy Windows 10!