beep
Produce tones through the PC speaker
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
beep [options]
DESCRIPTION
beep uses the PC speaker to produce tones of specified frequency and duration. It can play simple melodies, alert sounds, or serve as an audio notification in scripts.Multiple tones can be sequenced using the -n (new) option to separate distinct beeps. This allows creating simple musical sequences or multi-tone alerts.
PARAMETERS
-f frequency
Frequency in Hertz (default: 440 Hz)-l duration
Duration in milliseconds (default: 200 ms)-r count
Number of repetitions-d delay
Delay between repetitions in milliseconds (default: 100 ms, not applied after the last repetition)-n, --new
Start a new beep (use for sequences)-D delay
Delay after every repetition including the last, in milliseconds-e device, --device=device
Explicitly set the device to use for generating beep tones-s
Read from stdin and beep after each newline-c
Read from stdin and beep after each character-h, --help
Display usage information-v, -V, --version
Display version information--verbose, --debug
Enable debug output
INSTALL
CAVEATS
Requires access to the PC speaker device (/dev/input/by-path/platform-pcspkr-event-spkr or similar). May require root privileges or appropriate group membership. Not all systems have a functional PC speaker.
HISTORY
beep was created by Johnathan Nightingale and has been a staple of Linux audio notifications since the early 2000s. It provides a lightweight way to produce sounds without requiring audio subsystems.
SEE ALSO
speaker-test(1), aplay(1), play(1)
