37.22 Beeping

This section describes how to make Emacs ring the bell (or blink the screen) to attract the user’s attention. Be conservative about how often you do this; frequent bells can become irritating. Also be careful not to use just beeping when signaling an error is more appropriate (see Errors).

Function: ding &optional do-not-terminate

This function beeps, or flashes the screen (see visible-bell below). It also terminates any keyboard macro currently executing unless do-not-terminate is non-nil.

Function: beep &optional do-not-terminate

This is a synonym for ding.

User Option: visible-bell

This variable determines whether Emacs should flash the screen to represent a bell. Non-nil means yes, nil means no. This is effective on graphical displays, and on text terminals provided the terminal’s Termcap entry defines the visible bell capability (‘vb’).

Variable: ring-bell-function

If this is non-nil, it specifies how Emacs should “ring the bell”. Its value should be a function of no arguments. If this is non-nil, it takes precedence over the visible-bell variable.