Pidgin Has No Sound In Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

For some reason, Pidgin, which is included in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, has no notification sounds even though other applications do play properly. Whether I selected Automatic or ALSA as the output method, no sounds would play. Here’s how I fixed it.

  1. In Pidgin, select Preferences from the Tools menu (or press Ctrl+P)
  2. Click on the Sounds tab
  3. In the Method drop down list, select Command
  4. In the Sound command text box, enter the following: aplay %s
  5. Select an event with an assigned sound from the Sound Events list
  6. Click the Test button. You should now hear the notification sound
  7. Click the Close button

Aplay is the command-line ALSA sound player. I tested it on the command line and it played audio files just fine. So, it also works in Pidgin.

45 thoughts on “Pidgin Has No Sound In Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon”

  1. Yes, should work fine on any distro. If you don’t have aplay, you can also try other command-line players.

  2. I haven’t yet upgraded to 8.04. Surprised to hear that the fix is still needed. Glad it’s working.

  3. Thanks, solved my problem. I used wavplay, but that won’t work as soon as I was listening to music (‘device busy’). With aplay it works.

  4. Hey dude!
    THANK YOU!
    I’m searching for 3 hours to fix that. You get it! I can hear now my sound. 😀

    Great!