Open Radar

 
Summary:
The “Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs” accessibility feature is very useful, and in most cases it works as expected. Notifications generally do not trigger this screen flash, however, notifications, from any source, which use tri-tone unexpectedly trigger the screen flash.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enable the “Flash the screen when an alert sound occurs” setting under System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Audio.
2. Run AppleScript `display notification "Screen will not flash"` (Attached as “No Screen Flash (default).applescript”)
3. Run AppleScript `display notification "Screen will not flash" sound name "tink"` (Attached as “No Screen Flash (tink).applescript”)
4. Run AppleScript `display notification "Screen will flash" sound name "tri-tone"` (Attached as “Screen Flash (tri-tone).applescript”)

Expected Results:
None of the AppleScripts’ notifications should make the screen flash

Actual Results:
The notification created by the AppleScript in item 4 causes the screen to flash

Notably, while these AppleScripts are good minimum viable reproduction examples, this behaviour is also reproduced in other applications which emit notifications via NSUserNotification. Other examples include Telegram for Mac (notifications are configurable between tri-tone (“Default”) and others) and Basecamp for Mac (notifications always use tri-tone).

Version/Build:
10.13.6 (17G65)

Configuration:
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)