I want to find and assign a custom audio file to make Thunderbird give me audible (and distinguishable) alerts when email comes in. No idea what’s going on with Gnome but I keep hearing that ‘pop’ sound every minute or two yet can’t find a single reason for it, no new emails, no Signal messages, no notifications in the tray. Quite annoying! I only want pings for email so thought I’d find one that’s unique to Thunderbird. But where should I drop it? I am assuming it’s not best to put in ‘Music’ folder, a system folder would be better so i don’t accidentally delete it. But which folder would be the best/correct place to put it?
thanks
Look in /usr/share
If that dir doesnt show correctly, use Ctrl+L in Files, to edit the location, and enter admin:///usr/share at the beginning, this will launch it elevated.
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That is in Edit/Settings , General tab. Under Incoming mail use the “Play a sound” setting.
I have been there, I am asking where to save a new .wav file for use there.
Thanks. I managed to find that in Files via Other locations/harddrive/
I found a folder in there called ‘Sounds’, that looks like a suitable place for it! thanks
PS, admin:/// - very cool! I couldn’t paste the file, did that and then I could. Noted in my little book 
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I put it there, told TB to use it, but it doesn’t play. I noticed it’s an mp3, all others are .ogg, so converted it and now it’s working. thanks very much. That admin:/// is a game changer for me! Kind of a ‘terminal paranoia bypass’ 
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You can save the .wav somewhere in your home folder tree, like ~/Music then select the .wav from inside Thunderbird.
Its not a good idea to put your personal files into /usr/shared. That folder is managed by Fedora packages and DNF.
I suspected as much. This will be a rare exception. I just want one sound just for TB, maybe it would have been better to dive into the TB system files and replace the defauilt one there. It’[s working though, and I woni’t be making a habit of it. Promise 
There is a trivia way to use a file from your HOME why do you need to do the harder work of usinf /usr/shared?
Its your system and you can do what you want with it.
But you get to keep all the broken pieces…
I expect your hack will be undone on the next Thunderbird update.
Are you referring to my idea of using TB profile folders to nest my audio file in? If so, yes good point. (I assume a TB update can’t go into usr/share/ ?!
What are you referring to by ‘HOME’? If you mean Home/Music or anywhere I regularly access, I mentioned that in my opening post. I don’t want to put this file in anywhere where I will clear it out at some point, and I will. So I’d like it nested in the system files as a file only pointed to by TB, so it will never be lost or moved by accident
That is exactly where updates will write files.
Yes.
Maybe create a folder that you will not simply delete the contents of then?
~/ImportantDoNotDelete?
If you want to put files outside of your $HOME then use /usr/local that is never used by RPMs.
Reminds me of the one time I tried pkexec with Nautilus and Gedit some years ago; never did it again as it’s real easy to mess-up permissions 
I think I’ll prefer any root file access requiring grit and Terminal so I’m fully aware of what’s going on. admin:/// might be particularly useful for doing quick stuff from LiveUSB sessions though!
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Ah, i see a problem there then.
Obviously i considered that, but it’s not my preferred way. It is of course doable.
Perfect, thanks