Custom Steam Achievement Sound

A guide on how to use custom achievement sounds on Steam.

Introduction

Hello fellow achievement hunters!

Since I've been using this script for a while and liking what it accomplishes, I wanted to share my method of replacing the default achievement sound with a custom one.

While there are great tools that do that with more options (shoutout to SAN[github.com]), I wanted to provide a more lightweight solution that works reliably for me. Note that this isn't entirely my code, I patched it together with bits and bobs I found online.

Creating the script and tips

First, open Notepad (or any kind of code editor).

This is the base script that you can use:

setlocal
set "source_file=C:\[wherever your new sound is]\Steam_audio\desktop_toast_default.wav"
set "destination_file=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamui\sounds\desktop_toast_default.wav"
copy /y "%source_file%" "%destination_file%"

exit /b 0

Save this script under whatever name you want but make sure to set the file format as .bat as shown in my short clip:

This script looks for a file you set as the source file and then goes to the place where your destination file is to replace it with your source file.
i.e: You have a source file on your desktop (your new achievement sound) and the destination file is the original achievement sound provided by Steam.

Make sure to fill [wherever your new sound is] with the location of your source file, wherever you might have placed it.

After creating this script, press Win+R to open the "Run"-dialogue and enter shell:startup , which will open a new Explorer window and show you your startup folder. Simply put the newly created script in here so that it runs whenever you start your PC.

To test the script before your boot, first (before executing it), navigate to where Steam is installed on your PC and locate the desktop_toast_default.wav file - which in my case (and therefor in my script) is under :\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamui\sounds . Double click desktop_toast_default.wav and it should play your old sound. Execute your script and now it should play the new sound after double clicking the file.

Tips and troubleshooting

• Make sure the source file (= the new sound) has this exact name and file format: desktop_toast_default.wav
  That is because the script replaces a file in Steam's files and Steam needs the exact same names in order to use these sounds.
  
• Yes, that leads to the new achievement sounds also playing when you complete a download since Steam uses the "desktop toast" for both that and achievements.
  
• Make sure that the destination file (the old sound) is correct. Before executing the script, you can go to the location Steam is installed in on your computer and navigate to the mentioned folder in my script. Double click the "desktop_toast_default.wav" - file and it should play the sound you are used to.
  
• I have timeout /t 60 at the very top of my script to ensure that Steam is started and updated before the script runs. In this case, the script waits 60s before continuing. That is because after every update, Steam might reset the audio file to its default state and if the script runs and Steam isn't done updating / didn't open properly, it might not update. You can also not put it there or alternatively set it to 30 or lower if by your experience / on your machine that still works fine.

Closing words

Thank you for reading my guide.

My goal was to help people who wanted a simple but reliable way of changing their achievement sound.

Feel free to post a comment if you have further questions / want to share ideas what achievement sound on personally uses. I personally use the PS3-achievement-sound as my achievement hunting started on that platform when I was a child.

If you enjoyed the guide please leave a Like and a "Favourite", it helps others who want to achieve as similar result. :)

[not_again.exe]

That's what my script does, but automatically on every boot of your PC.
The reason why that's useful is because on every update of Steam, those sound files get replaced with the default files.
Keeping the original sound file does nothing as Steam isn't addressing it anymore and again, with every update it gets replaced anyway.

[gato.grande340]

Get your sound and convert it to a WAV then go to. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamui\sounds. Then scroll down till you find, desktop_toast_default. then copy the name and paste the name onto the sound you want, now remove the original from the folder and put yours in and it should work now. (i personally added a letter to the original sound file just in case even though i removed it from the folder, but i did that out of paranoia)

[m3rlin]

Nice!
If you don't want to execute this every time you can start Steam only with this script. Like this:

@echo off
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe"
timeout /t 60 /nobreak >nul 2>&1

set "source_file=C:\Users\CJ\Documents\desktop_toast_default.wav"
set "destination_file=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamui\sounds\desktop_toast_default.wav"
copy /y "%source_file%" "%destination_file%"

exit

The 60 seconds timeout is necessary because Steam can make some updates and locks files for changes. When you create a shortcut to your script and you change the shortcut destination to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c <path_to_script> you can even put the shortcut in your taskbar instead of steam.

[SmergolGandalf]

After my family was recently kidnapped by Ralph Schumacher because I refused to sell him my car, I thought there was no hope left. But this guide has changed my life, shown me that there are still positive things out there, and now I can move forward in peace.