# Custom Windows sounds: make your PC speak its notifications

Updated 2026-10-31

Windows lets you replace many of its system sounds, such as notifications, errors or a device being plugged in, with your own audio files. Instead of a chime you can hear a voice: a robot butler saying “You have a new notification”, a game character, or a calm narrator.

This guide shows where the setting is and how to make short spoken WAV files with the free SuperClonica engine.

## Open the Sounds settings

Press Windows key and R, type mmsys.cpl and press Enter, or go to Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Sound, and open the Sounds tab; in Windows 11 it is also under Settings, Personalization, Themes, Sounds. The list under Program Events shows every Windows event that can play a sound, from Notification and Device Connect to Low Battery Alarm.

## Replace a sound with your own file

Select an event, click Browse and choose your file, then click Test to hear it and Apply to keep it. Windows accepts only WAV files here, so convert MP3 files first. When you are happy, use Save As to keep the set as your own sound scheme. The built-in sounds stay in C:\Windows\Media if you want to go back. Apps that play their own sounds are not affected.

## Make spoken WAV files

Hear voices free on their pages with a line of 30 to 100 characters, no account needed. Then install the free engine with python -m pip install superclonica-cpu and run, for example, superclonica --text "You have a new notification." --voice voice.json --lang en --normalize --output notification.wav. The engine writes WAV directly, so the file can go straight into the Sounds tab. --normalize keeps every sound at the same loudness.

## Keep system sounds short

A notification sound should finish in one or two seconds, an error sound even faster; long lines get annoying the tenth time. Use short phrases such as “Device connected”, “Battery low” or “Done”. For a themed scheme, voice all events with the same voice and seed so they sound like one character.

## Ideas and languages

Popular themes are a spaceship computer, a butler, a game announcer or your own voice, trained once in the studio from a 5 to 10 second recording. Character voices in the catalog are fan-made, so keep schemes made with them for personal use. The engine speaks 31 languages; Chinese is not supported yet.

## More guides

- [Text to speech in MIT App Inventor, with a custom voice](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/app-inventor-text-to-speech)
- [Custom Google Assistant voice: what works on Android](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/custom-google-assistant-voice)
- [Tesla Boombox custom sounds: make your car talk](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/tesla-boombox-custom-sounds)
- [EdgeTX voice pack: make your radio speak in any voice](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/edgetx-voice-pack)
- [Microsoft Narrator in Windows: how to turn it on or off and change its voice](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/windows-narrator-voice)
- [Samsung text to speech: settings, voices and engine](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/samsung-text-to-speech)
- [Android text to speech: Select to Speak and Read aloud](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/android-text-to-speech)
- [OBS text to speech: make your stream speak any text](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/obs-text-to-speech)
- [Countdown voice generator: a spoken countdown for videos, events and timers](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/countdown-voice-generator)
- [Name ringtone maker: talking ringtones in AI voices](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/name-ringtone-maker)
- [Adding text to speech voices and speech packs in Windows](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/windows-speech-voices)
- [Mac text to speech: natural offline voices on macOS](https://superclonica.com/en/guides/text-to-speech-mac)

## Text to speech and comparisons

- [Text-to-speech that runs on your own computer](https://superclonica.com/en/text-to-speech)
- [Supertonic vs SuperClonica: same model, faster and cleaner](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/supertonic)
- [Fish Audio and Fish Speech vs SuperClonica](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/fish-audio)
- [OmniVoice vs SuperClonica: more languages or more speed](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/omnivoice)
- [Qwen3-TTS vs SuperClonica for local text-to-speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/qwen3-tts)
- [VoxCPM 2 vs SuperClonica: studio sound or CPU speed](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/voxcpm)
- [F5-TTS vs SuperClonica: zero-shot cloning or fast CPU speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/f5-tts)
- [An offline alternative to ElevenLabs](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/elevenlabs)
- [Kokoro TTS vs SuperClonica: two small models for local speech](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/kokoro)
- [Piper TTS vs SuperClonica: tiny devices or custom voices](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/piper)
- [Coqui XTTS-v2 vs SuperClonica: a Coqui TTS alternative](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/xtts)
- [Chatterbox TTS vs SuperClonica: instant cloning or a trained voice file](https://superclonica.com/en/compare/chatterbox)

## Frequently asked questions

### How do I change the notification sound on Windows?

Open the Sounds tab with mmsys.cpl, select Notification under Program Events, click Browse, choose a WAV file and click Apply.

### Why can’t I select my MP3 file?

The Windows Sounds tab accepts WAV files. Convert the MP3, or make the sound as WAV directly with SuperClonica.

### Can Windows say a phrase instead of a chime?

Yes. Make a short spoken WAV file in any voice and assign it to the event.

### Can I save my custom sounds as a scheme?

Yes. After assigning the sounds, use Save As in the Sounds tab to keep them as a sound scheme.

- [Browse game character voices](https://superclonica.com/en/voices/game-characters)
- [Install the SuperClonica engine](https://superclonica.com/en/superclonica)

## Sources

- [Windows Central: how to manage system sounds on Windows 11](https://www.windowscentral.com/how-manage-system-sounds-windows-11)
- [SuperClonica engine on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/superclonica-cpu/)
- [SuperClonica](https://superclonica.com/en/)
- [AI voice catalog for text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/explore)
- [Text to Speech API: free key, plans from $5](https://superclonica.com/en/speech-api)
- [Custom voice commissions for Supertonic 3](https://superclonica.com/en/requests)
- [How it works: voices, local speech, training](https://superclonica.com/en/guide)
- [Install the faster Supertonic 3 engine](https://superclonica.com/en/superclonica)
- [About us: speech synthesis enthusiasts](https://superclonica.com/en/about)
- [Contacts, support and voice complaints](https://superclonica.com/en/contacts)
- [Privacy policy: what data we keep](https://superclonica.com/en/privacy)
- [Terms of use: rules for buyers and authors](https://superclonica.com/en/terms)
- [Text to speech](https://superclonica.com/en/text-to-speech)