Image: istock/kerkez

In the age of remote work, round-the-clock Slack “pings” have augmented traditional voiced asks and watercolor talk for many telecommuters. On a given day, a person can routinely field dozens of these audio notifications, yet many people opt to use the default sound effect rather than customize this feature to their liking.

Slack’s settings offer a number of notification sound effects to choose from ranging from someone hypnotically saying the word “hummus” to cartoonish clips a la “boing” and “yoink.” This step-by-step guide will explain how to change Slack’s notification sound on a desktop for a more personalized workspace experience.

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“We put a lot of thought into the design of Slack to ensure it’s customizable to everybody’s needs and preferences. In addition to things like custom emoji and the ability to change or customize the appearance of your Slack workspace color, there are controls for how and when you receive notifications, and what those notifications sound like,” said a Slack spokesperson via email.

“You can even change your notification sound for each workspace you’re in, which is great if you’re on multiple teams across multiple projects and want to use ‘Knock Brush’ for one or ‘Ding’ for another,” they continued.

How to change Slack’s notification sound

First, go to the Slack desktop page and click on your photo icon in the top right corner and then select Preferences. Within the Preferences menu, scroll down the list of Notifications features and you will see a dedicated Sound and Appearance section. A drop-down menu in the Sound and Appearance section allows you to peruse and select your new notification sound of choice. You can also test each sound effect by clicking on the individual options.

In total, there are 13 notification sounds to choose from, including offerings such as “boing,” “ta-da,” “plink,” “ding,” and others. There is also a sound option titled “hummus,” and once selected, your notification alert becomes a person saying the word “hummus.”

A Slack spokesperson said that these sound effects are “largely derived” from Glitch, Slack’s predecessor, and detailed the origins of the hummus notification sound.

“Its backstory is a fun part of the Slack folklore: Our former Head of Brand Communications, Anna Pickard, delighted the early team with the British pronunciation of the Mediterranean dip so much that they recorded it and made it a notification sound option.”

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Customizing the Slack experience

There are myriad ways to customize the Slack workspace and add a little personality to the experience. TechRepublic has crafted detailed how-to guides explaining how to create custom emojis to share on Slack as well as ideas to keep in mind before pinging the entire Slack channel. Additionally, we spoke with experts and curated a guide to help make Slack less annoying and distracting altogether.

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