Windows 10 '!' sound on most wx apps

#1

This is weird. In almost all wxpython-based apps I have tried the keyboard makes windows trigger the “exclamation” sound.

Even the demo! If I open the simple button demo, click a button or the whitespace to get focus, then press any key I get the sound! This happens with every gui I make, regardless of machine or win10 version. It doesn’t happen if the gui is waiting for text input.
I discovered this as I was attempting to use hotkeys in an audio project, when extraneous noise is not welcome!

Any ideas please?

#2

Well, yes, this is just as Windows works. It’s not specific of wxPython. Of course you can always suppress system sounds from the windows control panel.
From within a wxPython program, I wouldn’t know how to avoid it… on top of my mind, I may suggest to give the WANTS_CHARS style to the widget, and then just do nothing. Of course this will disable all keyboard navigation also… so you would have to re-wire navigation keys handling by yourself… at the very least, something like

class MainFrame(wx.Frame):
    def __init__(self, *a, **k):
        wx.Frame.__init__(self, *a, **k)
        p  = wx.Panel(self)
        self.b1 = wx.Button(p, pos=(10, 10), style=wx.WANTS_CHARS)
        b2 = wx.Button(p, pos=(10, 50))
        self.b1.Bind(wx.EVT_CHAR, self.onk)

    def onk(self, e): 
        e.Skip()
        self.b1.HandleAsNavigationKey(e)

but this will work only for the tab key, not the arrow keys.

But there may be other ways to do this.

#3

As @ricpol suggests, this is a Windows thing. Specifically, it rings the bell when a widget that has the focus, but is not able to handle keyboard events, gets a keyboard event. Or something like that.

For an application hotkey you probably should be using a wx.AcceleratorTable. This works just like accelerators associated with a menu item (like Ctrl-O to open a file). In fact, when an accelerator key is pressed that is in the AcceleratorTable then you will get an EVT_MENU event just like you would have it is was a real menu item.

Prevent Windows from playing bell when hitting any key?
#4

Thanks both.
Got it thanks, acceleratortable was just what I needed.