How to stop the bell ringing in bash

To stop bash from trying to ring the bell add

set bell-style none

to the /etc/inputrc file. You can also be added to a local ~/.inputrc file – but this won’t work if
you log in as root.

Also, note that this won’t stop other applications from trying to ring the
bell – for this it might be best to switch off the bell at BIOS level.

See man bash.

Other applications whose bells you might like to stop:

less: Use the -q option. This can be acheived permanently by adding alias less=”less -q” to your .bashrc file.

man: man uses the $PAGER environment variable to display man pages, or the default pager (normally less) otherwise. Therefore add export PAGER=”less -q” to your .bashrc file.

vim: By default vim rings the bell. To stop this type set vb t_vb= at the colon-line, or add it to your .vimrc file.

emacs: Set the variable ring-bell-function to a function that doesn’t do anything. (setq ring-bell-function (lambda () nil)