Audacity 4 Alpha 1 release notes
The first alpha version of Audacity 4 is intended as an early preview and feedback opportunity on some core interactions we have designed.
Audacity 4 alpha 1 is not yet published.
What am I testing in this build?
The purpose of this early-stage alpha release is to provide a build for our community so they can test core aspects of Audacity’s functionality. This will greatly help us spot issues and refine the experience. When reporting issues, please keep them limited to these six areas.
Recording & playback
Editing audio
Applying destructive and realtime effects
Exporting projects and audio files
Customising the interface to your liking
Anything related to the interface (dialogs, popups, entering text values, viewing on multiple monitors, etc.)
We want your feedback
We really value your feedback at this stage - it directly shapes Audacity 4’s development
New features & improvements in Audacity 4
A new interface
Multiple colour theming options
Multiple clip visualisation options
When working with the ‘modern’ clip style, you can change the colour of clips as well as tracks
A new Customise toolbar widget, accessible via the ‘cog’ icon on the far right of the top bar
A new Workspaces feature, which can be used to save different layouts of the interface
A persistent playhead
Clips can be moved around freely - no longer obstructed by other clips
Recording can be initiated from any position in the timeline
Multiple clips can be selected and edited at the same time
When full clips are selected by clicking on their header, drag handles appear that allow them to be trimmed or time-stretched
Multiple clips can be grouped together. This feature can be found by selecting the ‘...’ icon on the clip header, or by right-clicking on selected clips
A new split tool for splitting clips quickly. You can toggle this feature by pressing the S key. If you hold the S key down, the feature will be temporarily enabled until you release the S key
New settings & shortcuts for ‘ripple’ editing, which allow you to delete and paste clips, whilst preserving synchronisation across your project. Along with our grouping feature, this is intended as a replacement to the ‘Sync-lock’ feature found in Audacity 3. The new shortcuts for ‘ripple editing’ can be found in Preferences > Shortcuts
Tools like the Selection, Multi, and Draw functions are now built directly into the main workflow, eliminating the need for separate buttons. For example, when you zoom in to the sample level, the Draw tool activates automatically. As a result, the Selection and Multi tools are no longer required, since all their features are always available by default. This streamlines the interface by reducing complexity without sacrificing functionality.
The looping feature has been improved.
Missing features in Alpha 1
These features are currently in development and will be included in the main release of Audacity 4.0
Macros
Spectrogram
Label tracks
Label track editor
Metadata editor
The plugin manager
Cloud uploading
OpenVino plugin support
Numerous native Audacity effects
The ‘Envelope’ tool
Various other tools and commands (these items are disabled in the build)
System requirements
Audacity 4 has higher system requirements than Audacity 3, mostly due to Qt's platform support. We expect Audacity 4 Alpha 1 to work on the following platforms:
Windows 10 & 11 (x64, but not ARM yet)
macOS 12 and later
Linux: Ubuntu 22.04, RedHat 8.6, openSUSE 15.6, Debian 11.6 and later
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