Bug 504437

Thank you for the feature request! Downloading sound themes is already covered in bug 502883, so let's make this one about being able to change individual system sounds.

You can in fact do this already! Individual sounds that are implemented as notifications with sounds allow you to override the sound in System Settings > Notifications > [System Notifications or Application Settings]. And the login sound is implemented this way, so you can make it play any sound file you want.

Probably makes sense to put a link to the Notifications kcm and a bit of helper text in the footer of the System Sounds kcm - you can swap sound themes and turn them on/off there, but it doesn't give you any guidance on how to swap or disable individual sounds.

Something like "Sounds for particular system or application events can be individually configured in the Notifications page [Notifications kcm button]"

Could be, yes. On the other hand it may cause frustration since only *some* sounds can be overridden there — the sounds that are backed by notifications. If an app asks for a sound without using a system notifications as the underlying implementation, the sound won't be override-able like that.

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #4)
> Could be, yes. On the other hand it may cause frustration since only *some*
> sounds can be overridden there — the sounds that are backed by
> notifications. If an app asks for a sound without using a system
> notifications as the underlying implementation, the sound won't be
> override-able like that.

Those would also not be affected by the sound theme though, or would they?

If they do apply, then swapping them centrally would still be necessary so you could pick a different "ding" sound.

(In reply to cwo from comment #5)
> (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #4)
> > Could be, yes. On the other hand it may cause frustration since only *some*
> > sounds can be overridden there — the sounds that are backed by
> > notifications. If an app asks for a sound without using a system
> > notifications as the underlying implementation, the sound won't be
> > override-able like that.
> 
> Those would also not be affected by the sound theme though, or would they?

The Notifications KCM allows to change the sound of a specific "event" to a custom sound file or a different theme-named one (though this is kind of purposefully not made clear in the UI). But that is a capability of apps/services that use KNotifications and so, expose their notification events.

> If they do apply, then swapping them centrally would still be necessary so
> you could pick a different "ding" sound.

Changing a specific theme sound (so any application requesting it gets the change) is essentially editing the Sound Theme, which I'm not sure we should offer a specific UI for it.  I see this similar to a user changing their favorite app's icon by directly modifying the theme's files. There is also an easy way to create a new theme that inherits from another one, and just overrides some specific files falling back to the original. 

IMHO this is more in the realm of Theme creators, or at least knowledgeable users (ricers?) that can play with the Theme folders to make a minimal change. This kind of niche customization should be covered with a tutorial/blog post, instead of adding a complex UI. 

The more general cases should be mainly served by switching different themes, which will hopefully improve after implementing downloads from the store (as covered in 502883). There are also some themes packaged directly by the distros (I found deepin and posh, besides ocean, will have to check why oxygen is no longer packaged)

We do allow some fine-grained theme editing e.g. for color schemes, but I can see the argument that it may be better to avoid the complexity. I guess a sound theme editor might also be a nice third-party app development project.

I still think a link to the Notifications kcm would make sense here, I'll try to come up with a wording that takes Nate's arguments into account for the 6.5 period (if I don't forget...).

(In reply to cwo from comment #7)
> We do allow some fine-grained theme editing e.g. for color schemes, but I
> can see the argument that it may be better to avoid the complexity. I guess
> a sound theme editor might also be a nice third-party app development
> project.
> 
> I still think a link to the Notifications kcm would make sense here, I'll
> try to come up with a wording that takes Nate's arguments into account for
> the 6.5 period (if I don't forget...).

I agree on both

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #2)
> You can in fact do this already! Individual sounds that are implemented as
> notifications with sounds allow you to override the sound in System Settings
> > Notifications > [System Notifications or Application Settings]. And the
> login sound is implemented this way, so you can make it play any sound file
> you want.

But there are some system sounds not changable in notifications, like volume up/down. What about them?