How I trigger the "System Bell" in nodejs

Question

I'm running a long running custom nodejs script and would like to be notified when the script is completed.

How do I make nodejs trigger the "System Bell"?

Answer 1

Output the BELL character (Unicode 0007) to the standard output.

console.log('\u0007');

Update 2023

Solution above doesn't work anymore, but writing directly to stdout still works (tested on Node.js v14.20):

process.stdout.write('\u0007');

References

• ASCII/ISO 8859 (Latin-1) Table

• Unicode Characters: 00000 to 000FF

• The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7: Portable Character Set

• Programming with Unicode Documentation (unicodebook.pdf)

• How a bullet turns into a beep – The Old New Thing

• Unicode 10.0.0 Final Names List

Answer 2

The console.log('\u0007') didn't work for me running VSCode on windows 10. The following code did work:

import { exec } from 'child_process'
exec(`rundll32 user32.dll,MessageBeep`)

Answer 3

I know this question is tagged unix, but I found it from Google so here is a Windows PowerShell solution.

The current answer works fine in Windows, but I wanted something a bit more unique than the standard Windows tone so this worked better for my needs:

const { exec } = require('child_process');

// Single beep
exec("[console]::beep(1000, 500)", {'shell':'powershell.exe'});

// Multiple beeps
exec("1..3 | %{ [console]::beep(1000, 500) }", {'shell':'powershell.exe'});