The reason microwaves beep when their timers reach zero should be relatively obvious – it’s to tell you that your food is done.
Sure, this alarm may seem completely unnecessary when you’re standing right there, impatiently waiting for your 2 minute noodles to heat up, but the reminder can be handy when you’re multitasking in the kitchen, such as when you’re warming up some rice to go with the curry you’re stirring on the stove.
The same logic applies to the beeping follow-up alarm that sounds (sometimes constantly) when you don’t open the microwave up when its cooking is complete – the machine is doing its misguided best to help you!
While the beeping may indeed be annoying, so is having to reheat your food for a second time after you get distracted and forget about it.
As for the beep that sounds whenever you press a button? Believe it or not, that’s a feature and not a bug.
Each beep is an audible acknowledgement that this cold, unfeeling machine has received and understood your command. While annoying, this does actually make the microwave easier to use. If the microwave didn’t beep, it’d be all too easy for a careless or distracted user to accidentally set the timer to 10 seconds rather than one minute, or vice versa, leaving them frustrated by improperly heated food.
While you COULD take your microwave apart and try to tear out the buzzer (PROTIP: don’t do this, unless you REALLY want to void your warranty), the best way to switch off the beeping in a microwave it to check if it has an optional silent mode.
While the option isn’t available for all microwave models from all brands, selected microwaves will let you disable their beeping, provided you can find the option by correctly navigating the menus and submenus on their digital display.
Consult your microwave’s manual to see if you can shut your machine up. If you’ve lost or thrown out your microwave’s instruction booklet, check its model at Appliances Online – we keep PDF copies of product manuals available on our site for your reference.