Saving and exporting projects

There are two ways to get your work out of Audacity: Saving the project, and exporting audio.

Saving projects

You can save projects using the File > Save Project menu. A saved project (.aup3) has the most information about your project available, but can only be opened in Audacity. There are three options available, each useful for a different use case:

  • Save Project (Ctrl+S/Cmd+S) will save your current project. If you save for the first time, you may need to specify where to save it to.

  • Save Project As... will save your project in a new place and continue editing on it, should you want the original project to remain untouched.

  • Backup Project... will save the current state of the project in a new file, but won't switch to it.

Exporting audio

You can export your project into an audio file using the File > Export menu. Exported audio (.mp3, .wav, .ogg, and more) can be opened with a wide variety of programs, and uploaded to some social media, but may have worse quality and lose some Audacity-specific information.

In the File > Export menu, you'll see a few different options:

Note: You may need to install FFMPEG to access some of these options.

  • Export as MP3, Export as WAV and Export as OGG will export your project into the selected format.

  • Export Audio... (Ctrl+Shift+E/Cmd+Shift+E) will provide you options to export to more uncommon formats, such as FLAC, M4A, AC3, WMA, AMR, MP2 and custom FFMPEG exports.

  • Export Selected Audio... will export only the current selection time range, instead of the entire project.

  • Export Multiple... (Ctrl+Shift+L/Cmd+Shift+L) will let you export different parts of the audio based on either tracks or labels.

There are also two additional options which export non-audio data:

  • Export Labels... will export labels if you have any.

  • Export MIDI... will export the currently selected note track as a MIDI or Allegro file. You can only export one note track at a time.

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#233: Use simpler Crossfade Tracks

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