Some PC gamers have been hearing a mysterious "ba bing" notification sound seemingly at random while using their PC. It now appears that the sound has been the Epic Games launcher all along.
Fortnite news account FireMonkey traced the noises to six audio files used by the launcher's social and party features. The chimes play when a party member joins or leaves, receives a party message, changes party joinability, or enables or disables push-to-talk.
Because an Epic party can remain active while the launcher runs in the background, the sounds may play while the user is in another application, sometimes without an obvious corresponding notification, such as a pop-up text notification appearing in the bottom right-hand corner of Windows 11.
Epic confirmed through the Fortnite Status account that the party chimes were triggering more frequently than intended. The company said it was updating the launcher to reduce the number of events that can play sound while it runs in the background.
Epic also said it plans to introduce a setting that lets users decide whether the chimes play at all, with additional notification controls expected later. FireMonkey noted that users can temporarily remove the WAV files from the launcher's SocialChimes folder if they are really becoming bothersome, although this is an unofficial workaround and any future launcher update may automatically restore them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Open a question for an answer from TweakTown's coverage of this news, or ask your own below.
Which Epic Games Launcher actions trigger the "ba bing" chimes?
Why can the chimes play while the launcher is running in the background?
Will a future Epic Launcher update restore the deleted chime files?
Have a question that isn't listed here? Ask below, and TweakBot will answer it.
If the noises match these specific chimes and Epic Games Launcher is running, the launcher is the likely cause, and it's best to close the launcher for a period of time to see whether the sounds persist. If not, then it was definitely the Epic launcher.
