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In the last few weeks my iPhone occasionally makes some kind of notification sound. It's not any of the built-in sounds, and I've gone through all the "Sounds" settings just to make sure. It's a two-step tone on a marimba or something like it, but not the built-in one. It happens about once every 10 minutes.

How do I figure out which app is causing the sound? There is no other notification. It's infrequent enough that it's hard to tell whether killing any particular app fixes it, and I use enough apps that killing them is impractical.

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Is there any way you could record the sound? It's hard for us to guess after the sound without hearing it :-) Is there any notification visible in the notification center? (Swipe from top to bottom on your iPhone) – Michiel Jun 19 '12 at 7:35
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Do you have the GMail app installed? When a new mail arrives the app notifies with a sound but without any visual banner. – Davide Gualano Jun 19 '12 at 9:50
Davide, that was it! Thank you!! Damn Gmail app. :) I'm surprised Apple allows background sound without some sort of indication where it came from. – Chocohound Jun 19 '12 at 20:24
The GMail app is really weird, in regards to notifications. I too took a while the understand from where that damned noise came from :) – Davide Gualano Jun 20 '12 at 9:02

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Try disabling sound notification permissions for all apps that you don't need sound notifications for in your notification settings (Settings > Notifications, scroll down to Apps and disable from there)

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Sounds like it would work but is quite painful. I found my particular issue thanks to Davide's comment. But I'll accept this answer or any better answer on how you would find such a problem generically. – Chocohound Jun 19 '12 at 20:26

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