Give Linear its own notification sound on your Mac

Why Linear notifications blur together on a Mac

macOS plays one alert sound for every notification and only lets you switch an app's sound on or off — never change it. Linear's native Mac app labels its banners cleanly, but they all still share your Mac's one alert sound, so an issue assigned to you pings exactly like a comment on something you're only loosely following.

Linear moves fast, and its Inbox reflects that: subscribe to a project or an issue and you'll hear about status changes, new comments, and label edits. The notifications that actually need you — an assignment, an @mention, a triage item — arrive in the same stream, at the same volume, as all the background activity.

What you can do without TrillMark

• Linear's notification preferences. Per-team, you can choose to be notified about issues you're assigned, subscribed to, or @mentioned in, and route notifications to desktop, email, Slack, or mobile. This is the right place to cut noise — but it doesn't change how anything sounds on your Mac.
• Inbox and subscriptions. Linear's Inbox groups what needs you, and unsubscribing from noisy issues helps — but every notification that does come through uses the same Mac alert sound.
• System Settings › Notifications › Linear. Toggle the sound on or off and pick banner vs. alert style — but there's no custom sound, and no way to make an assignment louder than a passing status change.
• A Focus. A Focus can hold Linear back while you're heads-down, but that hides the assignment rather than making it recognizable.

How TrillMark makes the Linear issues that need you stand out

TrillMark reacts to the banner Linear's app already shows. Add Linear, give it a sound and a color, and because TrillMark can read the notification's text, you can add a rule that fires only for what needs you — an issue assigned to you, an @mention of your name, or a triage item — while subscribed activity stays quiet.

So an assignment or an @mention arrives as a louder sound you recognize plus a labeled flash, and the background hum of project updates stays soft or silent. It's a different job from a code-review ping in GitHub — this is your team's issue tracker telling you something is now yours.

It reads that text only on your Mac, only to decide how to react, and never sends it anywhere.

Set it up in about a minute

1. Open TrillMark and add Linear from the popular-apps list or a recent alert.
2. Give it a sound you'll know by ear and a color; TrillMark labels the flash with the app's name.
3. Add a rule that matches what needs you — the text contains your name, “assigned,” “mentioned,” or “triage” — and give it a louder sound.
4. Optional: let subscribed activity use a soft tone or no sound, so only the issues that are now yours reach you by ear.
5. Turn off the system sound for Linear in Notification settings so you hear only the sound you chose.