My computer makes funny noises sometimes. They sound like notifications, but I can’t figure out what they’re meant to say.
Well, until recently. And then I figured it out.
If you’re a mobile developer, you may have had a similar experience. Unlike normal notifications, which are usually accompanied by a visual clue, these seem to come from nowhere.
It turns out they don’t come from nowhere. They come from the emulator. If you’re working on any apps that support notifications, those might be the cause of the random sounds.
They can also be a result of your automated tests going through the motions.
In short, the emulator can get quite chatty. If you don’t need to explicitly hear the sounds it makes, just mute it.
Ever since I muted my emulator, I no longer get random notification sounds in the middle of the night. My paranoia is at rest.
Oh, but do remember to unmute if you’re explicitly testing the audio functionality of your app, or you might get quite frustrated!
- Pro tip: you can run your emulator with no audio but calling it like so:
emulator @Nexus_5X_API_23 -noaudio
(On Windows it’s a bit more complicated, see here)
Optimising My Life 