How to Play a Custom Sound on
Low Battery or Screen Unlock
on Windows

The problem with Windows sound events

Windows used to have a rich sound scheme — every event from emptying the recycle bin to plugging in a USB had its own sound. Over the years Microsoft quietly gutted most of them. Today, Windows 11 ships with sounds disabled by default, and there's no built-in way to play a custom audio file when the battery hits 20% or when you log back in after pressing Win+L.

You can technically script this with Task Scheduler + PowerShell, but that's a rabbit hole most people don't want to go down. SlapWin handles it in two toggles.

What SlapWin's event sounds do

SlapWin Premium includes two always-on sound triggers that run independently of the mic detection:

Setting it up

1. Activate Premium — event sounds are a Premium feature. Enter your license key in the activation card at the bottom of the SlapWin settings window, or grab a key at the link below.
2. Open settings — double-click the SlapWin tray icon.
3. Scroll to Event Sounds — you'll see two cards: Wake / Unlock and Low Battery.
4. Toggle them on — both are off by default. Flip the switch next to each one to enable it.
5. Customise the sound (optional) — each event uses a default sound from the Special pack. You can point it to any file in your SoundPacks folder by editing the path in the text box.

Using your own audio files

The sound path is relative to your SoundPacks folder (stored at %LOCALAPPDATA%\SlapWin\SoundPacks). So if you drop a file called my_alarm.mp3 into the Special folder, just type Special\my_alarm.mp3 in the path box and hit Tab to save.

Why this beats Task Scheduler

Setting up a Task Scheduler job to play audio on battery events is possible but fragile — it requires PowerShell, the right trigger conditions, and it breaks if the audio service isn't running. SlapWin handles all of that internally, runs as a lightweight tray app, and survives sleep/wake cycles reliably.

Does it work on desktop PCs?

The screen unlock sound works on any Windows machine — desktop or laptop. The low battery alert only fires on devices with a battery, so it's laptop-only by nature. SlapWin checks gracefully and skips the battery polling on desktops.