Arch Linux

ema92

Member

Registered: Yesterday

Posts: 1

XFCE does not play system sounds

Hello everyone,
I'm using Arch with XFCE 4.20, everything's running fine, but systems sounds (e.g. volume up/down, trash empty,..) do not work, even though all other sounds (media, browser is played fine).
I'm using PipeWire.
If I try, for instance

canberra-gtk-play -i trash-empty

the sound is played, but when the event is triggered, nothing happens.
Of course, I enabled system sounds in Settings - Appearance and I added the appropriate value to the xfcont settings with

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Net/SoundThemeName -s "freedesktop"

There's no error in the logs with journalctl  when the event is triggered and the sound is not played.
What can I do?

bebeto

Member

Registered: Today

Posts: 2

Re: XFCE does not play system sounds

Your audio setup (PipeWire) is working fine since sounds play via canberra-gtk-play, so the issue is that XFCE isn’t triggering event sounds. The most likely cause is that the GTK sound module isn’t loaded - install libcanberra and libcanberra-pulse, then ensure GTK_MODULES=canberra-gtk-module is set (e.g. in ~/.profile) and log out/in. Also confirm XFCE settings with xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Net/EnableEventSounds -s true and that a sound theme like freedesktop is installed. If all that is correct and it still doesn’t work, it’s likely due to XFCE 4.20 itself, where many system sound events are no longer consistently emitted, meaning some sounds (like volume changes) may simply never trigger despite correct configuration.