Skip to content
SwitchboardSwitchboard

Notifications and sounds

Settings › Notifications sets how Switchboard gets your attention while you work in another session or app: with a macOSWindows notification, a sound, or both. Notifications and sounds each have their own card and switch, so you can have one without the other. You never get either for the session you are looking at in a focused window.

Settings on Notifications and sounds: the Notifications card with its switch and Send a test notification, and the Sounds card with a row for Needs you, Finished, Stopped with an error and Project action ended, each with a sound and a play button, and Volume at the bottomSettings on Notifications and sounds: the Notifications card with its switch and Send a test notification, and the Sounds card with a row for Needs you, Finished, Stopped with an error and Project action ended, each with a sound and a play button, and Volume at the bottom

Open it

Section titled “Open it”
  • In Settings, choose Notifications in the list on the left.
  • Run Settings: Notifications in the command palette (Command, K or Command, Shift, PControl, K or Control, Shift, P) while Settings is open.

Notifications

Section titled “Notifications”

On by default. A notification shows when Claude needs you (a permission, a question or a plan), when Claude finishes a turn or stops with an error, and when a project action ends. Click it to open the session. See Session states for what each one says.

Turn the switch off to stop the notifications. The Dock badge still counts the sessions that wait for you, and the Dock icon still bounces.The dot on the taskbar button still says sessions wait for you, and the button still flashes.

Send a test notification shows one notification like the ones for a session that needs you, so you can check that they come through. It is off while notifications are off.

The command palette has Notifications: turn off and Notifications: turn on.

When the system turns them off

Section titled “When the system turns them off”

macOSWindows can turn off notifications for an app on its own. When it has, Settings › Notifications says so at the top of the page, with Open System SettingsOpen Windows settings to go and turn them on. Sounds and the Dock badgethe taskbar dot still work. Switchboard checks again when you come back to its window.

Newer versions of macOS don’t let Switchboard see that setting. There, the page can’t tell you, so next to Send a test notification it asks “Nothing showed up?” and has Open System Settings to check that Switchboard is allowed.

Sounds

Section titled “Sounds”

Off by default. With Sounds on, Switchboard plays a sound for each of these moments, with notifications on or off:

Moment When Sound on a new install
Needs you Claude asks for a permission, has a question or a plan. PingWindows Notify Messaging
Finished Claude finished a turn. GlassWindows Notify System Generic
Stopped with an error Claude stopped because something failed. BassoWindows Critical Stop
Project action ended A project action like Dev or Test stopped. PopWindows Ding

Each moment has a different sound, so you can tell them apart without looking. Pick another from the system sounds of your computer, or None for no sound. Move over a sound in the list to hear it. The play button next to it plays the sound you picked. When several sessions change at the same moment, you hear one sound: Needs you first, then Stopped with an error, Finished and Project action ended.

Volume sets how loud every sound plays. Let go of the slider to hear the new volume.

Turning Sounds off keeps the sounds you picked: they show dimmed, and come back when you turn it on again.

The command palette has Sounds: turn on and Sounds: turn off.

The sounds are the classic macOS alert sounds, such as Glass, Ping and Tink.

The sounds are the ones in Windows’ Media folder, such as Windows Notify Messaging. With Sounds on, the Windows notification itself is silent, so you don’t hear two sounds.