Typing is one of the most-searched sounds on free libraries and one of the most annoying to source, because you usually need something like exactly eleven seconds of typing that stops on the beat. Generating gets you the length you asked for, and the right keyboard: a membrane laptop, a heavy mechanical board and a 1960s typewriter sound completely different, and a search for "typing" mixes them together.
Every clip shows the exact prompt that produced it. The render script reads its prompts from the same file as this page. Copy one, change a word and generate your own.
typing steadily on a mechanical keyboard with tactile switches, distinct clacking key presses, close mic, quiet office
typing on a laptop membrane keyboard, soft muted key taps at a steady pace, close mic, quiet room
single mechanical keyboard key pressed and released, crisp click with a bottom-out thock, very close mic, dry
enter key struck hard on a mechanical keyboard, deep decisive clack, very close mic, dry
vintage manual typewriter typing a line then the carriage return bell and lever, close mic, small office
computer mouse clicked twice in quick succession, tiny sharp plastic clicks, very close mic, dry
mouse scroll wheel turned through its detents, fine ratcheting ticks, very close mic, dry
retractable ballpoint pen clicked repeatedly, sharp plastic snaps, very close mic, quiet room
someone typing very fast and erratically on a mechanical keyboard, dense overlapping key presses, close mic
quiet open-plan office ambience, distant typing, a phone ringing far away and low ventilation hum, seamless loop
These models respond to physical description. Name the material, the action and the space.
typing steadily on a mechanical keyboard with tactile switches, distinct clacking key presses, close mic, quiet office
"Tactile switches" is a real spec with a real sound. It gets the click without the mushiness of a membrane board.
typing on a laptop membrane keyboard, soft muted key taps at a steady pace, close mic, quiet room
"Membrane" and "muted" together stop the model reaching for the louder mechanical recordings it has more of.
someone typing very fast and erratically on a mechanical keyboard, dense overlapping key presses, close mic
Pace carries the character's state: steady sounds like work, erratic sounds like panic. Set it in the prompt instead of in the edit.
single mechanical keyboard key pressed and released, crisp click with a bottom-out thock, very close mic, dry
"Pressed and released" gets both halves of the key travel, which makes a UI click sound physical.
A cut needs typing that runs for the exact duration of a shot and stops cleanly. A library gives you fourteen seconds when you needed nine, so you fade it and it sounds faded. Set the render length to the shot length. Every prompt here carries an explicit duration for this reason.
A hacker scene, an office comedy and a period drama need three different keyboards. Mechanical boards are bright, clicky and percussive, with an audible bottom-out. Membrane laptops are dull, fast and close to silent. Typewriters are loud and mechanical, and the carriage return is a beat of its own. Pick one and name it in the prompt; that does more for a scene than processing.
A room with only typing in it sounds like a sound effect. Real desks have pens, mice, mugs, chairs and a ventilation hum, and the small items make the space sound inhabited. Generate two or three of them separately and lay them under the typing at a low level. The pen click and the scroll wheel in this collection are meant for this, and they work better as a bed than in the foreground.
The models run on your machine, which changes the cost, the privacy and what you can automate.
Weights are fetched once. After that, generation, the library and the API all work with the network off. Everything lives in one SQLite file and one folder of WAVs under ~/.soundbox, and nothing is uploaded.
Soundbox runs an MCP server in the same process, with tools for generating and listing sounds. Generated files come back as absolute paths, so an agent can copy them into a project.
Every model's terms are shown before you download it, and non-commercial weights need an explicit confirmation. Soundbox is MIT. The licence of the model that made a sound governs what you may do with it.
claude mcp add --transport http soundbox http://127.0.0.1:17494/mcpcurl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:17494/api/generate \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"model":"audiocpp-stable-audio-3-sfx","prompt":"8-bit coin pickup blip","duration_s":1}'