Add a setting to flash the taskbar when the terminal emits BEL #8215

PankajBhojwani · 2020-11-10T17:43:00Z

The terminal taskbar icon can now flash when the BEL sequence is
emitted, to let the user know something needs their attention.

The BellStyle setting can now be set to audible, visual or both or
none. When the pane receives a BEL event and the bellStyle includes
visual, we bubble the event up all the way to AppHost to handle
flashing the taskbar.

Closes #1608

WSLUser · 2020-11-10T17:51:15Z

Can you rename the setting of all to both instead please? I think that will be more user friendly.

PankajBhojwani · 2020-11-10T18:02:49Z

Can you rename the setting of all to both instead please? I think that will be more user friendly.

The copy format setting also only has two flags (html/rtf) but we use all to set them both - I want to keep things consistent. Also, the idea is that there may potentially be more flags added in the future so all covers all bases nicely.

zadjii-msft · 2020-11-10T18:05:31Z

Can you rename the setting of all to both instead please? I think that will be more user friendly.

What if we inevitably add a third value to that enum? Suddenly, both is confusing 😉

zadjii-msft

Thoughts:

Should this only flash the taskbar when the window isn't active? From the docs on FlashWindow:

Typically, a window is flashed to inform the user that the window requires attention but that it does not currently have the keyboard focus.
Should we let unfocused panes/tabs flash the taskbar?
I'm pretty against having visual be the default, considering typing in bash and having it BEL at you when it fails to autocomplete, which now causes the window to flash too? IDK that just seems annoying, but that's my opinion

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/TerminalSettingsSerializationHelpers.h

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/Profile.h

zadjii-msft · 2020-11-10T18:10:22Z

doc/cascadia/profiles.schema.json

@@ -800,7 +819,7 @@
        },
        "bellStyle": {
          "default": "audible",
-          "description": "Controls what happens when the application emits a BEL character. When set to \"audible\", the Terminal will play a sound. When set to \"none\", nothing will happen.",
+          "description": "Controls what happens when the application emits a BEL character. When set to \"all\", the Terminal will play a sound and flash the taskbar icon. An array of specific behaviors can also be used. Supported array values include `audible` and `visual`. When set to \"none\", nothing will happen.",


For whatever reason, my head is having a hard time parsing this description. I don't know how to do it better, but this feels weird to me. Summoning @cinnamon-msft

miniksa · 2020-11-10T18:30:47Z

The SND_SENTRY flag passed to PlaySound in the original PR should be blinking the window/taskbar icon when a sound is played already, presuming the user has reported that they want audio alerts to be visual in the OS Settings:

So a few things:

I'm not sure this feature is strictly necessary as this provision to turn audio into visual queues is just a part of the Windows OS.
I'm not opposed to adding an app-specific overriding setting to make us blink ourselves should someone be focused on just visual cues in Terminal and not across their whole OS.
I don't think it should be the default either way. People with an accessibility issue are likely already familiar with the broad range of Ease Of Access options in Windows and can turn it on that way. People who want it to be specific to our app could turn it on.

PankajBhojwani · 2020-11-10T18:38:26Z

Noted the comments, the default is only audible now and we no longer flash the taskbar icon if the window is focused.

I think we should still flash the taskbar even if it wasn't the last active control that sent the bell though - its the same with the audible bell currently, we will play the sound even if it wasn't the last active control that sent it.

PankajBhojwani · 2020-11-10T20:38:55Z

The SND_SENTRY flag passed to PlaySound in the original PR should be blinking the window/taskbar icon when a sound is played already, presuming the user has reported that they want audio alerts to be visual in the OS Settings:

This does not seem to work for me (tried setting this and playing BEL in terminal - no flash in taskbar). Can someone else try as well just in case?

j4james · 2020-11-11T20:00:44Z

This does not seem to work for me (tried setting this and playing BEL in terminal - no flash in taskbar).

It doesn't flash the taskbar for me, but I didn't think it was meant to. It just flashes whatever part of the screen you've chosen in the settings. It's either the title bar (or in the case of a UWP app, the window border), the whole of the active window, or the whole screen. You can't miss it, even if the app is in the background, because it effects the focused window, not the window that produced the sound.

miniksa · 2020-11-17T00:30:21Z

OK well as not default, flashing our own HWND/taskbar icon, and selectively depending on how focused it is sounds better to me.

miniksa · 2020-11-17T00:33:24Z

Also to be clear, this only flashes the taskbar icon, not the window frame? And only when it's not otherwise in focus? Can you show a gif of it working?

PankajBhojwani · 2020-11-17T16:25:08Z

Also to be clear, this only flashes the taskbar icon, not the window frame? And only when it's not otherwise in focus? Can you show a gif of it working?

It only flashes the taskbar icon when the terminal is not focused, yes. Gif added!

miniksa

OK. I'm good with this.

src/cascadia/TerminalSettingsModel/TerminalSettingsSerializationHelpers.h

src/cascadia/TerminalApp/Pane.cpp

…/pabhoj/visual_bell

DHowett

Love it!

DHowett · 2020-11-18T20:59:17Z

moved out of body

DHowett · 2020-11-18T21:00:31Z

Just gotta give it a code format!

ghost · 2020-11-18T21:00:45Z

Hello @DHowett!

Because this pull request has the AutoMerge label, I will be glad to assist with helping to merge this pull request once all check-in policies pass.

p.s. you can customize the way I help with merging this pull request, such as holding this pull request until a specific person approves. Simply @mention me (`@msftbot`) and give me an instruction to get started! Learn more here.

DHowett · 2020-11-18T22:25:22Z

Needs conflict resolve

UweKeim · 2022-05-22T11:12:08Z

Any plan to make this change ever available, at least in the Preview of Windows Terminal?

DHowett · 2022-05-22T15:40:23Z

This feature has been available for two years.

UweKeim · 2022-05-22T16:06:37Z

Thanks, @DHowett

I've just tried the sequence of the above GIF in a PowerShell:

sleep 3;"^G"

Then quickly minimized the window and nothing happens. I.e. nothing flashing.

I'm using:

German Windows 11, 64-bit
PowerShell-Tab, run as Administrator
Terminal Preview version 1.13.10984.0

Probably I'm just doing something stupid and/or missing some plain obvious things.

Trying it from a .NET console application with:

Console.Write("\u001b[G");

also does not flash the task bar icon.

OK, I think I get it now:

The "BellStyle" setting was not set explicitly, thus resulting in only a sound (which was not hearable since I turned of all system sounds).

After configuring the CMD type to this:

My C# console application was able to make the task bar flash/be lightened when using this:

Console.Write("\a");

Resulting in this effect:

I'm still unable to do the same for PowerShell and sleep3;"^G" but since I do need it for CMD only, not PowerShell, this is sufficient for me.

Update:

After reading Dustin's reply, this one worked correctly in PowerShell:

sleep 3;[char]0x7

DHowett · 2022-05-22T16:48:40Z

Glad you got it working!

So, couple things. \x1b[G is ESC [ G (or CSI G) which definitely isn't the same as ^G. In addition, PowerShell does not treat ^ as introducing a literal control character. If that's what you're entering, you are asking it to print the literal characters Caret and G. You might have better luck with `a or even [char]0x7.

setting to flash taskbar when BEL is emitted

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zadjii-msft reviewed Nov 10, 2020

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PankajBhojwani added 2 commits November 10, 2020 13:34

changed default back to audible only

798bd20

only flash if window is unfocused

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PankajBhojwani mentioned this pull request Nov 17, 2020

[Scenario] Progress Bar Follow-ups #6700

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ghost added the Needs-Author-Feedback The original author of the issue/PR needs to come back and respond to something label Nov 17, 2020

PankajBhojwani added 2 commits November 17, 2020 16:06

Merge branch 'main' of https://github.com/microsoft/terminal into dev…

49d8c20

…/pabhoj/visual_bell

rename events

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ghost deleted the dev/pabhoj/visual_bell branch November 18, 2020 22:55

PankajBhojwani mentioned this pull request Jan 6, 2021

Flashing the window title (and the task bar) via FlashWindowEx has no effect #8713

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Don-Vito mentioned this pull request Jan 16, 2021

bellStyle 'visual' #8807

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cinnamon-msft mentioned this pull request Jan 22, 2021

Add remaining 1.6 release features MicrosoftDocs/terminal#223

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zadjii-msft mentioned this pull request Sep 14, 2021

Bell sound on git hooks scripts not working #11202

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Add a setting to flash the taskbar when the terminal emits BEL #8215

Add a setting to flash the taskbar when the terminal emits BEL #8215

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Add a setting to flash the taskbar when the terminal emits BEL #8215

Add a setting to flash the taskbar when the terminal emits BEL #8215

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