Nostalgia
The sign-in sound: why old messenger sounds still give us butterflies
The sign-in chime, the new-message ding, the nudge rattle. Why a few seconds of sound became the soundtrack of the 2000s, and how sounds work on Chatroom.
Chatroom · 5 November 2026 · 1 min read
Ask anyone who grew up with instant messengers what they remember, and there's a good chance they'll make a noise. The little chime when someone signed in. The ding of a new message. The rattle of a nudge.
Why those sounds stuck
They meant someone. A chime wasn't a notification from an app; it was a person, arriving. Often a very specific person you'd been waiting for.
They were rare. No feed, no likes, no badge counts. A sound meant something actually happened.
They came with the evening. Get home, sign in, and the room filled up with chimes as your friends came online one by one. It's the soundtrack of a whole generation's after-school hours.
They were a bit dramatic. The nudge didn't just make a noise, it shook the whole window. Subtle it was not.
The sounds on Chatroom
We've brought the idea back with our own original sounds (no copies of anyone else's):
- A soft chime when a contact signs in, with a pop-up in the corner.
- A ding when a new message arrives.
- A rattle when someone sends you a nudge, and your window shakes.
Turning them on, off or down
Browsers only let a website make sounds after you've clicked on it, so the first chime arrives after your first click.
In your contact list, Sounds: on/off switches them all, and Alerts… lets you choose each sound separately and preview them. You can also turn on desktop notifications for when the tab is in the background; they never show the text of your messages.
The best sound of all
Honestly? The chime when the one person you were waiting for finally signs in. Some things don't change.
Sign up free and hear it for yourself. Read more in 15 things everyone who used MSN will remember.