How to Enable a New Mail Sound for Gmail
If you want to hear a new email sound when you use Gmail in your desktop web browser, you can make that happen—just not in Gmail itself.
Since Gmail doesn’t support pushing sound notifications through a web browser, you must install a third-party program like Notifier for Gmail (a Chrome extension).
If you’re using the Notifier for Gmail Chrome extension:
Select Extensions next to Chrome’s navigation bar, then select More actions (three vertical dots) and choose Options. Scroll down to the Notifications section and make sure Play alert sound for new emails is selected. Change the sound using the drop-down menu. Exit the window when you’re done. The changes are saved automatically.
How to Enable a Pop-Up Notification
You can set Gmail to display a pop-up notification when new email messages arrive in Chrome, Firefox, or Safari when you are signed in to Gmail and have it open in the browser. Just turn on that setting in Gmail by selecting the Settings icon then choosing See all settings and going to General > Desktop Notifications. The notification is not accompanied by a sound.
How to Change Gmail Notification Sounds in Other Email Clients
For Outlook users, you can enable notification sounds for new email messages in the FILE > Options > Mail menu, with the Play a sound option from the Message arrival section. To change the sound, open Control Panel and search for “sound”. Open the Sound Control Panel applet and modify the New Mail Notification option from the Sounds tab.
Mozilla Thunderbird users can go through a similar process to change the new mail alert noise.
For other email clients, look somewhere in a Settings or Options menu. Remember to use an audio file converter if your notification sound isn’t in the correct audio format for the program.
