Terminal bell
Lowest complexity; minimal context.
The short answer
Use standard notifications for simple state changes; use Heard when context and parallel sessions matter.
A terminal bell or desktop banner is cheap, familiar, and often enough for one process with a binary done-or-not-done state. It is also easy to miss and usually requires reopening the source window to understand what happened.
Heard adds natural-language compression, session identity, listening modes, and—in Power—voice replies. That is more useful for long or parallel agent runs, but it adds another application and, for managed features, an optional hosted processing path.
Desktop banner
Scannable and persistent; still screen-dependent.
Generic TTS
Audible but often too literal and noisy.
Heard
Session-aware compression with voice reply on Power.
Terminal bells and native banners.
Choose a bell or desktop banner when the only question is whether one process finished. These tools are easy to trust because they do little, and they preserve the original window as the place to investigate.
- Almost no setup.
- No semantic summary.
- Can be missed among other notifications.
- Usually requires returning to the screen.
Generic text-to-speech.
Generic TTS can make terminal output audible but normally lacks agent semantics and prioritization. It may read repetitive tool churn, code fragments, or logs that are difficult to understand in audio.
- Works with any available text.
- Can preserve exact wording.
- High risk of verbosity and alert fatigue.
- No built-in session salience.
Heard’s session-aware voice layer.
Heard judges which events deserve speech, maintains recent context, distinguishes active sessions, and changes depth by listening mode. Native Claude Code and Codex integrations provide richer signals than the universal wrapper.
- Questions, blockers, failures, and results are prioritized.
- Parallel sessions retain identity.
- Managed and open source processing choices.
- Requires macOS 14 or later today.
Pay for context only when context saves attention.
If a simple bell reliably brings you back at the right moment, keep it. If you repeatedly reopen several sessions just to discover that nothing needs you—or miss the one that does—Heard addresses a materially different problem.
At a glance
Four ways to hear from an agent.
A summary of the notes above. Exact behavior depends on your terminal, notification settings, and integration path.
| Capability | Terminal bell | Desktop banner | Generic TTS | Heard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semantic summary | No | No | No | Yes |
| Parallel session identity | No | No | No | Yes, by integration |
| Zero new app | Yes | Usually | Varies | No |
| Persistent visual history | No | Yes | No | No |
| Voice response | No | No | No | Heard Power |
Product facts
Feature comparison
- Semantic summary
- HeardGeneric tools usually read or signal rather than interpret.
- Parallel session identity
- HeardDepends on the integration path.
- Zero new app
- Terminal bellUse the tools already in your terminal.
- Persistent visual history
- Desktop bannerAudio is transient by nature.
- Voice response
- Heard PowerRoutes a dictated reply to the selected session.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Is Heard better than every coding-agent notification tool?
No. A terminal bell or banner is simpler and may be sufficient for a single predictable process. Heard is designed for context-rich and parallel agent supervision.
Why not send every terminal line to text-to-speech?
Literal output is often repetitive, code-heavy, and difficult to follow by ear. Heard aims to compress the stream into material state changes.
Does Heard keep a persistent notification history?
Heard’s core value is spoken awareness and session context. Use the agent, terminal, source control, and test output as the authoritative record.
Ready when your agents are
Hear the work without watching every screen.
Start with the full Heard Power experience for 14 days. No card required. The open source engine remains free.
Download Heard for Mac macOS 14 or later · Claude Code and Codex supported