New features in Audacity 2.2.0 - Appendix

This page is an appendix to New features in Audacity 2.2.0. It is an overview of further new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 2.2.0

• Details of all the major changes since 2.1.3 can be found in Audacity 2.2.0.

Sync-Lock

Sync-Lock used to be a button in the edit toolbar. Now instead you enable or disable it from Tracks > Sync-Lock Tracks.

Old Edit Toolbar, with Sync-LockNew Edit Toolbar, without Sync-Lock

New Edit Toolbar, without Sync-Lock

This should make it easier for users to avoid setting Sync-Lock on by accident by inadvertently nudging the button.

Easier Selection at Clip Lines

Left-clicking on a clip line will delete the clip line, merging the two neighbouring clips.

Now if you hover over the Clip line and press and release the Esc key you can then click on the clip line and select from there by dragging, without deleting the clip line and merging the clips.

Mac Cursors

The cursors on Mac used to be 16x16 pixels. Now they are higher resolution and use 32x32 pixels.

Hover Highlighting

Buttons in the track control panel now highlight when hovered over. The thumb on sliders now highlights when the mouse is over it.

Slider thumb not highlighted (Classic theme)

Slider thumb highlighted (Classic theme)

Escape Key

The Esc key now cancels all click-and-drag actions. It also chooses among overlapping mouse click targets, which is especially useful in the Multi-Tool.

Explanation when no Selection

The default behavior now for effects and for edits requiring a selection is that if you click on them without a selection, a dialog now shows explaining that you need to make a selection. Here an attempt to apply Fade effect was made without first selecting some audio.

Explanation dialog when an audio selection is required

Customisable spectrogram colours

The colors of the spectrograms are now customisable using custom theming. This can give greater clarity to the spectrograms. In the example below the high intensity greens stand out better than the reds in the standard spectrogram.

Standard spectrogram colours

Customised spectrogram colours

Simplified stereo splitting and joining

Previously splitting a stereo track created special 'Left' and 'Right' tracks. Now splitting creates mono tracks, panned left or panned right. Below is a screenshot of a stereo track split into two tracks, one panned left, one panned right.

Stereo track split into two mono tracks one panned left, one panned right

Documentation Overhaul

Major overhaul of the Audacity manual, including more work on clickable images.

• The menus in the manual have more extensive tooltips and more clickable areas.

• Over 300 new or modified images for this edition of the manual.

Links

New features in Audacity 2.2.0

Audacity 2.2.0 - detailed release notes for this release of Audacity