Terminal Bell for Long-Running Commands

I work on Windows/WSL2 with multiple desktops, and sometimes when I have long-running tests I’ll switch screens and completely lose track of where I was.

No longer!

Visual Studio Code (or Cursor) can play an audible cue from a terminal BELL character:

Then, in my .zshrc, I’ve added a couple zsh hooks that tracks when a command is started, and sends a bell when it’s finished, if it took longer than 1 second:

autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook

function notify_long_running_commands() {
  local stop=$SECONDS
  local elapsed=$(( stop - start ))
  if (( elapsed > 1 )); then
    echo -e "\a"
  fi
}

function track_start_time() {
  start=$SECONDS
}

add-zsh-hook preexec track_start_time
add-zsh-hook precmd notify_long_running_commands

Adjust your timeout to suit your attention span.