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Audacity 3.x

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Audacity Basics

Downloading & installing Audacity

Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. This page will guide you through the download & installation process.

Downloading through the Microsoft Store

Audacity is available from the .

Recording your voice & microphone

Audacity can record various types of microphones and other audio devices.

1. Connect your Microphone

You can connect your mic by plugging it into the appropriate port. In general, this means:

If you have a USB mic, plug it into a USB port.

Setting recording and playback levels

The recording and playback levels can be set using the sliders in the Recording and Playback meter toolbars:

The slider with the microphone icon sets the recording volume on a system level. If the operating system is prohibiting this action, this slider will be inactive.

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:

Sharing audio online

With Audacity 3.2 and onwards, you can easily share audio online.

With Audacity 3.2 you can quickly share audio online using the new service audio.com. To do this, simply click the Share Audio button.

You can now upload your audio by pressing Continue. If you'd like to link an existing audio.com first, you can do that by clicking Link Account.

Audacity will now prepare the track for upload and upload your audio.

Note: This may take a few minutes depending on how fast your computer is, how fast your internet connection is, and how long your audio is.

After your audio has been uploaded, press Continue. You will be taken to the audio.com website.

On audio.com you now can either create an account to use this with, or copy the anonymous link. To share the link,

Close the sign up panel,
click the share button (shown below) and
select Copy Link

You now can share your audio by sending this link to people.

All uploaded audio is private by default. Only people with access to the link can listen to it.

Linking audio.com to Audacity

Linking your audio.com account to Audacity lets you get the sharable link from Audacity itself. To link your account,

Press the Share Audio button. Note: You need to have some sort of audio present in your project for this button to work
Your browser will open audio.com
Login or sign up if you aren't yet logged in

Customizing Audacity

Using themes

Audacity comes with 4 themes preinstalled: Light, Dark, Classic and High Contrast. You can switch between themes by going to Edit -> Preferences -> Interface (macOS: Audacity -> Preferences -> Interface)

Once you have chosen a theme, click OK to close the preferences dialog and load the new theme.

Installing custom themes

Effect Presets

Each effect in Audacity comes with a predefined set of values that you can change and save according to suit your needs and workflow.

When you select an effect to apply to your audio (for example Effect > Noise Removal & Repair > Noise Gate...) Audacity will show you the effect settings window where you can change the different values according to your needs.

After you find the settings that best suit your needs you can use the Presets & settings button to save your settings for future use:

Click the Presets & settings button and select Save preset...

Repairing Audio Recordings

Noise reduction & removal

Removing background noise is core to most audio cleanup operations. Audacity has several tools to aid in this.

Best Practice: While it's possible to rescue an otherwise unusable file with noise reduction techniques, your recording will sound best if you take steps to ensure a noise-free environment before recording.

Noise Reduction

The Noise Reduction effect works best to remove a constant source of noise, like the hiss of fans, the hum of fridges, or whines, whistles and buzzes.

To use it, use the following steps:

Locate a section of your recording that's just your background noise, preferably a few seconds long, and select it.
Go to Effects > Noise Reduction and press the "Get noise profile" button.
Select all the audio for which you want to reduce the noise.

Tips:

If you set the sensitivity too low, or use a noise profile that doesn't properly represent the noise throughout your track, you may experience artifacts (random bursts of very short tones).

Noise Gate

The Noise Gate effect attenuates any sound quieter than a certain threshold while leaving sounds louder completely unaffected. To use it

Select a part of the audio that's just background noise.
Go to Effects > Noise Gate... to open the effect.
Click Select Function: Analyse Noise Level and press OK. Audacity will now tell you where your noise level lies and recommending a threshold.

Best practice: Use the noise gate after applying noise reduction. This way, you can use less aggressive noise reduction settings, which may grant you a cleaner end result.

Notch Filter

The notch filter removes a hum or whistle at a specific frequency. To use it:

Select the audio you want to apply the effect on
Go to Effects > Notch Filter to open the effect.
Enter the frequency you want to reduce, together with the Q-value (how many frequencies around the main one you want it to affect - the higher the number, the less frequencies).

Tips:

The "Mains hum" of the electricity grid is 60Hz in north and middle America, and 50Hz in most other countries.

Re-recording a section

Punch-in repair of recordings is an easy and fast way to fix short sections of a recording by re-recording it.

Fixing bad sections as they occur (Punch-and-roll recording)

Best Practice:

Removing clicks & pops

Using the Click Removal effect

The click removal effect can automatically remove clicks across an entire track.

To use it:

Audio Editing

Using realtime effects

Audacity 3.2 and onwards supports realtime effects

Downloading & installing realtime effects

While Audacity doesn't yet ship with realtime effects, you can download plugins for it. Currently supported plugin formats are Audio Units (macOS only), VST3, VST, LV2, and LADSPA. We have collected some plugins which we know to work on but you can find many more across the web. Once you install the plugins, they should be detected by Audacity once you restart it, if not, see the .

Making crossfades

Crossfades blend the end of one song with the beginning of the next one. There are several methods to achieve this in Audacity.

Crossfading Clips

If you have two clips in one track you'd like to crossfade, you can use Crossfade Clips effect. To use it:

Speeding up and slowing down audio

Audacity has several methods available to change speed and tempo of audio.

Changing the speed while preserving pitch

Caution: Changing speed without affecting the pitch always leads to artefacts. Avoid repeatedly applying these effects.

To change the speed while preserving the pitch, select the audio you want to apply the effect on and go to Effect > Change Tempo

Drag the slider or enter some numbers to change how much you want to speed up or slow down your audio. The controls are linked, so you just need to change the value you care about, the rest will update accordingly.

For extreme slowdowns (10x slower to thousands of times slower), you may want to use Effect > Paulstretch instead.

Note: Paulstretch is only capable of slowing down, so the stretch factor relates to how many times you want to slow down your audio.

The time resolution decides on whether the algorithm will focus on frequencies and pitch at the expense of rhythm (high time resolution), or whether it will focus on rhythm at the expense of pitch (low time resolution). Generally. 0.25 is a good compromise for most music

Changing speed and pitch at the same time

To change speed and pitch at the same time, use Effect > Change Speed.

Unlike , the Change Speed effect keeps the waveform mostly intact, so you can use this method repeatedly without any major loss in quality.

Dynamically changing the speed over time

You can change the speed of an entire project over time using Time Tracks. To add one, go to Tracks > Add New > Time Track. You only can have one time track per project.

Then click on the blue line and drag it upwards or downwards to change the speed at that time. Every time you click, a new control point is added, allowing you to change the speed over time

Tip: By default, the range goes from 90% to 110% speed. If you want to extend that, right-click the vertical scale (going from 90-110) and select Range... to set a new range. The new range may be between 10% and 1000%.

Changing playback speed

If you want to preview your audio at a faster or slower rate than normal, but without affecting the final product, you can use the Play-at-Speed toolbar

To use it, drag the slider to the desired speed (between 0.01x and 3x) and then click the small play button next to it to playback your audio at that speed. You can use the normal stop and pause controls to stop/pause playback.

Loudness Normalization

Apply this normalization effect to set the target loudness required by podcast platforms, television/radio programmes and some websites

Audacity provides you with two different built-in normalization effects available through the Effect -> Volume and Compression menu:

Loudness Normalization
Normalize

Normalize

Normalize is a peak normalization effect which apply gain or reduction to the selected audio so the level of the peak is changed to the desired level. You set the desired level of the peak (in dBFS) before applying the effect. This effect does not take into account the perceived loudness of the selected audio only the desired peak level.

Loudness Normalization

By comparison Loudness Normalization will calculate the perceived loudness of the selected audio and then apply gain or reduction to the audio so a desired loudness level is reached. You set the desired loudness (in LUFS, Loudness Units relative to Full Scale).

To apply Loudness Normalization:

Select the region containing the audio that you want to normalize. It could be an audio clip or the entire track.
Click Effect -> Volume and compression -> Loudness Normalization... to open the Loudness Normalization window

Set the target loudness in LUFS units using the Normalize perceived loudness to field.
Keep Normalize stereo channels independently disabled If you are normalizing a stereo track (Left and Right channels) with the audio levels already balanced as this mode will preserve its original stereo balance.
Disable Treat mono as dual-mono (recommended) if you are normalizing a mono track.

Best practice: Adjusting the audio's amplitude with this effect is normally best performed as a final editing step prior to export of the production audio.

Macros

Macros (formerly known as Chains) let you chain together multiple commands to automate repetitive tasks.

Music

Aligning music to beats and measures

Notes:

As of Audacity 3.3, these features are still in beta.

Making audio loops

This page is an introduction to creating background beats and audio loops from a pre-existing audio file.

Audio loops are a type of music that plays a few bars on repeat over and over. They can be created by taking a sample out of pre-existing content and looping it seamlessly.

1. Enable playback looping

To enable playback looping, simply click onto the loop button (1). When you do this, you'll note the blue looping region appear in the timeline (2). You can move the region and it's in and out point individually by dragging it.

Isolating or removing vocals from a song

This page describes some methods to try to isolate vocals in stereo tracks.

Note: There is no reliable way of separating vocals. The methods described in the article depend on the position of the vocal track in the stereo field.

Vocal Removal with vocals in the center and instruments spread around them

Manual steps

Select Split Stereo to Mono from the stereo audio track dropdown menu
After splitting the stereo track you will end up with 2 mono tracks similar to this:

If the vocals are panned in the center of a stereo track this method can sometimes be effective by removing what is common to both tracks (that is, the vocals), leaving behind what is different (that is, the instrumentals).

Audacity includes the Vocal Reduction and Isolation effect which provides the Remove Vocals option that you can use to try to remove vocals from a stereo track.

Vocal Reduction and Isolation also lets you specify the audio frequency range for vocals (by default 120 to 9000 Hz). This can help cure the common problem where center-panned bass or Hi-hat is also removed when removing vocals.

Isolating Vocals

You can also use the effect to attempt to isolate the vocals by choosing one of the Isolate Vocals options from the dropdown menu in the dialog.

Note that the end result may not be total vocal isolation or even satisfactory isolation of the vocals; it all depends on how the original recording was engineered.

Using AI models to separate vocals

Note: This is an experimental feature not yet part of the normal Audacity installation.

To use AI models in Audacity, you first need to download the current alpha with this feature from

Once you have installed this version, you can download and apply AI models via Effects → Deep Learning Effects.

Deep Learning Effects are computationally very intensive. Depending on the model used and your computer, it can take several minutes to hours to apply the effect to a single song. It is highly recommended to test out whether the model is satisfactory on a short section (less than 10 seconds) before applying it to an entire track.

Audio Analysis

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting overview

Installation exit codes

The setup program may return one of the following exit codes:

Exit code

Definition

Setup was successfully run to completion or the /HELP or /? command line parameter was used.

Setup failed to initialize.

Before returning an exit code of 1, 3 or 4 an error message explaining the problem will normally be displayed.

Future versions may return additional exit codes, so applications checking the exit code should be programmed to handle unexpected exit codes gracefully. Any non-zero exit code indicates that Setup was not run to completion.

Solving other problems

Can't open an MP3 file

If you see an error when importing an MP3 file, it can have the following causes:

Your file isn't using the MP3 codec, but instead is using a codec associated with another file extension (for example, the Advanced Audio Codec (aac) usually is found in .m4a files, and PCM Wave is usually found in .wav files). A true MP3 file will show MPEG Audio, Version 1, Layer 3. To solve this error, you can use to find out what the actual codec used in the file, and change the file extension accordingly (for example rename the audio.mp3 file to audio.m4a).
Your file is partially broken (Huffman Data Overrun). This is a bug with Audacity versions 3.1.3 and earlier, and you can fix it by of Audacity.
Your file is fully broken. If it can't be opened in Audacity, or anywhere else, your file might just be broken. This itself may have several reasons:
- If you just recently downloaded it from the internet, you may want to try downloading it again - in case there was a transmission error.
- If you just created it yourself, it might be that there was a write error. If possible try saving the file again, re-installing the app that was used to create it, or using a different app to create it.

No audio is coming through headphones

There can be several reasons for this. Some things to try:

If using a wired headphone, make sure that the wire is plugged in and that the plug is clean.
Make sure that the headphones are selected in the Audio Settings output. Note: On some devices, the internal card - usually called something among the lines of "HD Audio" are handling both internal speakers and headphones, depending on which is plugged in. You may need to select this option anyway even if it says "Speaker" instead of "Headphones"
If you connected the headphones after starting Audacity, you may need to go to Transport -> Rescan Audio Devices

Resetting Audacity

Resetting from within Audacity

You can reset Audacity by going to the following menus:

To reset the toolbars only: View -> Toolbars -> Reset Toolbars
To reset everything: Tools -> Reset Configuration

Purging the settings folder

If you cannot open Audacity or want a more thorough cleanup, you can also delete the configuration files manually. They can be found in the following locations:

Windows: C:\Users\<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\audacity\
macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
Linux: ~/.config/audacity/

Hint: These folders usually are hidden by default. You may need to show hidden files, or access their path directly, to access them.

You can delete all contents of the folder to get Audacity back to "factory settings". Alternatively, you can also only delete certain elements of it:

audacity.cfg is responsible for all preferences
pluginregistry.cfg contains a registry of all plugins and whether they can be used.
pluginsettings.cfg contains last used settings of effects as well as user presets.

Additionally, you may find some other files and folders there, eg. for macros, custom themes or plugins. These can also be deleted though, typically deleting the audacity.cfg and pluginregistry.cfg is enough in most troubleshooting scenarios.

Community

Contributing to Audacity

There are several ways to contribute to Audacity. All of them tremendously help out other Audacity users.

TODO

Pages under this section are just stubs. Feel free to work on them. Check out the and for more info

Untitled

ASIO in Audacity

Due to licensing restrictions Audacity cannot be distributed with built-in support for ASIO. However You can build Audacity for your personal use and include ASIO support.

Audacity can record and playback audio on your Windows PC using one of the following three alternative interfaces:

MME
Windows DirectSound
Windows WASAPI

ASIO (Audio Stream Input / Output) is an additional proprietary interface to record and playback audio in Microsoft Windows. ASIO bypasses the Windows audio mixing components to provide lower latency direct communication between computer audio software and hardware. Most audio recording interfaces manufacturers provide a driver to support ASIO.

ASIO supports 24-bit sampling which is only otherwise available using or WDM-KS (Windows Driver Model Kernel Streaming). 24-bit sampling allows greater dynamic range, lower theoretical and greater resolution at lower audible volumes.
An unmixed ASIO output is "bit identical" to the original source.
Multiple physical input and output channels of the hardware are accessed over one single device.

Windows interface protocol support multi-channel recording on some sound devices, but not the very low latencies that are possible on ASIO.

Synchronizing Tracks

Synchronizing with claps
https://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Rhythm_Track

Keeping Tracks Synchronized

Using looping Playback

Mastering for Audio Books

From

How to use Audacity

TODO

Working with Tracks

(this probably is a category on its own, but let's write it on this page for now)

Answering user questions

Answering user questions is the most direct way of helping users. It also will net you the most "thank you"s

If you know Audacity well, but don't want to , you can help users out directly. The most active communities in this regard are:

The ,
the , and

Developing Audacity

Audacity is being developed on Github. Most information necessary to contributing code can be found there, such as building instructions.

Note that Audacity currently is undergoing major restructuring. As such, we can't promise a swift review or merge of any pull requests you make.

As the codebase is over 20 years old, it's not massively beginner-friendly (though this should get better once the refactor is complete). If you are new to C++, you may want to try doing something else instead first - developing a plugin might be an idea.

Finding & testing plugins

We maintain a list of free VSTs and similar plugins on plugins.audacityteam.org. You can find, test and add plugins to the list.

To do this, you can get access to the plugins space via https://www.audacityteam.org/gitbook-plugins and then edit the relevant sections.

Exact details can be found here: https://plugins.audacityteam.org/contributing/adding-plugins-to-this-site

Additional resources

Changelog

Changelogs and release notes for current versions of Audacity

Older versions

Changelogs and release notes for historic versions of Audacity

Audacity 3.2.5

Audacity 3.2.5 was released on 1 Mar 2023

This is a hotfix release. It fixes the following bug:

#Fixed a bug where Audacity could accidentally spam

Audacity 3.2.4

Audacity 3.2.4 was released on 27 Jan 2023

This is a hotfix release. It fixes the following bug:

# Fixed the meters not retaining size

A full list of changes can be found .

Audacity 3.0.5

Audacity 3.0.5 was released on 29 Sep 2021.

Changes and improvements since previous version

Audacity 3.0.5 replaces all previous macOS versions.

This is a hotfix release that fixes a bug on macOS that could corrupt project files when being opened via cmd+o on languages where the decimal separator wasn't a dot.

New features in Audacity 3.0.4

This page is an overview of prominent new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 3.0.4

Version 3.0.4 is a hotfix release.

Fixed a bug with envelope points, which could multiply uncontrollably and cause Audacity to crash. In particular:

Audacity 2.x

Spectral analysis

Audacity has several powerful spectral analysis tools: Spectrogram View per track, Plot Spectrum, as well as support for Plugins.

Spectrogram View

Each track in Audacity can be viewed in a Spectrogram view:

To access it, click on the track menu dropdown and select Spectrogram.

The track menu also features Spectrogram settings, where you can tweak the scale, the colors, the used algorithms and the window size.

Tip: To view the waveform and the spectrogram at the same time, choose Multi-view instead.

Increasing Accuracy in Spectrogram View

You may notice that the spectrogram is somewhat blurry usually, where even if you have a precise frequency, the spectrogram makes it look like a whole range of frequencies is being played. This is an inherent mathematical tradeoff related to the window size:

Depending on what you're after, you can change the window size to fit your analysis: Smaller window sizes benefit time resolution, larger window sizes benefit frequency resolution.

Tip: If you change the algorithm from Frequencies to Reassignment, Audacity will attempt to sharpen both time and frequency resolution using the method of reassignment. This works best for signals that are separable in time and frequency with respect to the analysis window.

You can change both the window size and the algorithm in the spectrogram settings found in the Track Menu dropdown.

Zooming in on specific frequencies

You can zoom vertically in Spectrogram View by right-clicking the frequency scale.

Additionally, while hovering over the frequency scale, you can

Ctrl+Scroll to zoom in/out on the frequency scale and
Shift+Scroll to scroll up/down while staying on the same zoom level.

Plot Spectrum

To use Plot Spectrum,

select the audio you're interested in analyzing
go to Analyze -> Plot Spectrum.

Options

Algorithm

Spectrum (default) Plots the fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of the data, with the FFT window size being determined by the Size dropdown. The amplitudes are normalized such that a 0 dB sine (pure tone) will be (approximately) 0 dB on the graph.
Autocorrelation These options measure to what extent the sound repeats itself. This is done by taking two copies of the audio, and moving one forward by one sample. The two copies are then multiplied together, and all the values added up. This is repeated for two samples difference and so on, up to the number of samples in the size option. This gives a small result if the waveform is random (for example, noise) and a large result if it is repetitive (like a musical note). By looking at the peaks in the plot, the key frequencies present can be determined even if there is a lot of noise.

Function

Function offers choices like Rectangular, Hann, Hamming and others. We suggest you use the default Hann for most situations.

Details

The fundamental principle at work here is that the way we observe our data changes what we see. The "true spectrum" of your project would be computed over the entire project and would provide very detailed frequency resolution but essentially no time resolution at all. In other words, this "true spectrum" would offer an average frequency distribution over the entire project. If we select a short interval of audio, the short-time spectrum has frequency resolution limited by the observation window time AND the result is affected by the spectrum of the window itself. For general audio analysis, the Rectangular window is least desirable, and the other options offer slightly different effects

Exporting a spectrum for further analysis

Click the Export... button to export the current view as a tab-separated value text file.

Analyzer Plugins

Audacity supports the Vamp plugin format among others. Many of them can be found in the .

In your Downloads folder, create a new sub-folder "AudRepair".
Unzip the audacity-project-tools zip which you downloaded
Move the two .exe files from the unzipped folder into AudRepair.
Copy your defective .aup3 project file into the AudRepair folder.
Rename the file to broken.aup3.
Press Windows-key + R, and type cmd. A (black) cmd screen will appear.
Navigate to your AudRepair folder by typing cd Downloads\AudRepair and pressing Enter.
Type dir and press Enter. The following three files should be listed: audacity-project-tools.exe, broken.aup3, and sqlite3.exe
Type audacity-project-tools -drop_autosave broken.aup3 and press Enter.
The message "Project requires Audacity 3.0.0" will appear.
When the command prompt (C:\Users\(yourname)\Downloads\AudRepair\>) reappears, type dir again.
If a broken.recovered.aup3 file appears, open it in Audacity. If that file works as expected, go to File -> Save As... and save it to your usual location. The recovery process is now over, you can continue working as normal. If that file does not appear, or is still broken, continue with the following steps:
Type audacity-project-tools -recover_db -recover_project broken.aup3 and press Enter.
The messages "Project requires Audacity 3.0.0", and "Using 'sqlite3.exe' for recovery" will appear. Later the message "Executing query #xxxx...." will appear as the rescued file is being recreated. Note: This process can take quite a while depending on your specific machine. There is no status (or % completion) indicator, so you just have to be patient. You should plan 15-30 minutes per GB, though it may be faster if you have a fast PC. Keep an eye on available disk space. Due to a glitch, sometimes a single character can appear when the program is done, eg "z". If this happens, simply press Backspace.
When the process completes, your should be able to open the "broken.recovered.aup3" in Audacity. The message "File not saved properly" will appear the first time you open the recovered project. This is normal and you can ignore this message.

If the messages "Invalid block xxxx: Block not found", check to see if some audio was silenced - typically near your most recent edits. Usually these messages are spurious.

In your downloads folder, create a new sub-folder called "AudRepair".
Unzip the audacity-project-tools ZIP file that you downloaded
Move the unzipped files into AudRepair

Error codes

This page lists Audacity error codes and provides some troubleshooting steps on how to fix them.

If your issue isn't listed here, or the troubleshooting steps aren't working for you, feel free to ask in our communities:

Forum

Error opening sound device

This error indicates a problem with the hardware used for playback, whether it is permissions, drivers, connections, or if you ask the device to do something it cannot do. You can attempt the following steps to resolve it.

Error opening recording device

This error indicates a problem with the hardware used for recording, whether it is permissions, drivers, connections, or if you ask the device to do something it cannot do. You can attempt the following steps to resolve it.

Error code 11, error code 13, error code 101 and "Audacity failed to read a file in C:"

These errors can occur when attempting to load a damaged .aup3 project file. Damaged project files can be recovered as described in the following article.

Error -9996 Invalid Device Error

This error indicates that the device that's being attempted to use is not valid, for example:

The device got unplugged
The device has a faulty or loose connection
The device itself is faulty or not a real audio device.

This error can also occur when you are trying to record a number of channels that is not supported in the current configuration

This error can also occur when using Audacity on Windows with Windows WASAPI as the Host if the selected recording device is being used exclusively by another application. Some applications that could make use of the recording device exclusively are ASIO4ALL, Voicemod (when configured to do so) or Voicemeeter (when configured to do so).

You can attempt to fix this issue with the following methods:

Use a different USB port and USB cable. This will resolve the issue if the fault was in the cable.
Use a different audio host. Sometimes WASAPI works when MME doesn't, sometimes it's the other way round.
Use a different number of channels. For example, some Realtek only work when recording in Mono, while some others only work in Stereo when recording a (loopback) stream.

Error -9997 Invalid Sample Rate

This error can indicate an unsupported sample rate. Double-check that both your OS settings and the Audacity project rate are set to a supported sample rate (usually 44100 Hz or 48000 Hz).

This error can also occur when using Audacity on Windows to record a track while listening another existing track (also known as overdubbing) with Windows WASAPI as the Host if the sample rate of the recording device is different than the sample rate of the playback device. If possible set the same sample rate for your devices or use MME as the Host.

This error can also occur when you are trying to record a number of channels that is not supported in the current configuration To fix this, you can do the following:

Use a different audio host. Sometimes WASAPI works when MME doesn't, sometimes it's the other way round.
Use a different number of channels. For example, some Realtek only work when recording in Mono, while some others only work in Stereo when recording a (loopback) stream.

Error -9999 Unanticipated Host Error

This error means "something is wrong", most commonly

A lost connection to a USB audio device
Missing microphone permissions from the operating system.
Your device is unable to playback other tracks while recording. Turning off Overdub via Transport -> Transport Options may fix this.

You can try the , or attempt any of the other workarounds of this page.

Audacity did not recognize the type of this file

This error occurs when the file you're trying to open has no decoder available. You can attempt the following things to fix it:

Install FFMPEG. FFMPEG allows you to open most kinds of media files. Read more:
Check if the file you're trying to open actually is what it says on the tin. For example, some lower-quality programs name any audio file *.mp3, regardless of whether it actually is an MP3 file. Read more:

Unable to open, exception code 0xc0000005

This is caused by a corrupted audacity.cfg file, such as when upgrading from Audacity 3.1.3 to Audacity 3.2. You can solve this issue by upgrading to Audacity 3.2.1.

Missing Plugins

This is caused by missing . You can replace any missing effects from the effects sidebar.

Audacity currently looks for plugins in absolute paths. This means that if you open a project that was created on a different computer, Audacity will continue to check for the plugins in the exact same locations as they were on the old computer.

The Audacity IPC server failed to initialize

If you are on a low-end machine, this may be caused by insufficient resources, specifically memory.

This also can happen if you assign yourself a static IP in the hosts file. If that's the case, simply commenting out the assignment may solve this.

Error code=12 : "cannot allocate memory"

This is caused by an unexpected system state. Rebooting the computer resolves it.

Using Macros to Automate Frequent Tasks

A Macro is a sequence of pre-configured commands (mainly effects) in a set order that can be applied automatically to projects or audio files.

What are the main uses for Macros?

Macros in Audacity can be used for:

Batch processing: Apply one or more effects to multiple audio files and export the processed audio into a new file.
To use this select the Apply Macro to: Files... button in the or the dialog.
For more detail on batch processing please see .
Effects automation: where the in the or tracks in the current project is subjected to the same prescribed sequence of effects, and optionally, a file exported from the entire audio.

Macros can contain Select commands to make their own selections as the Macro runs

Effect presets: where selected, commonly used, effects are stored with your preferred settings for quick re-use.

How to access Macros

You can manage and apply Macros using the :

Tools > Macros... to manage Macros: them
Tools > Apply Macro > Palette... for a
Tools > Apply Macro > named Macro to

There are some and tips on using them.

Use Tools > Macros... if you need to create a new Macro or to edit an existing Macro.

dialog

Use the Shrink button to show a reduced dialog which lists the existing Macros.

This dialog is also available directly via Tools > Apply Macro > Palette...

Click Expand on the to return to the full dialog.

Apply Macro to

Both the dialog and the dialog have Apply Macro to buttons:

Project applies the selected Macro to the current project.
Files... applies the selected Macro to selected external audio files that are in a single directory.

It is recommended not to process more than 500 files at a time.

For more details see the page.

Macro Command Parameters

Commands that call Effects, Generators, Analyzers or Tools, use the same familiar graphical interface (GUI) as appears when they are used from the normal top level menus.

Many of the other commands provide a simple GUI comprised of checkboxes and text entry boxes. Typical examples can be seen in the and menus.

It is strongly recommended that you set parameters for the commands that you use in a Macro. Otherwise Audacity will use the last-used parameter setting(s) when you ran the effect(s) manually.

Also note carefully that settings used in Macros will not affect or change the last-used parameter settings for any effect when next run manually.

Basically to paraphrase: "What happens in Macros stays in Macros".

Please see for more details.

You can export a Macro as a TXT file using the Export button in and send it to another user, or copy it to another computer for use there

You can import another user's Macro, or a copied macro of your own, into your Macros folder by using the Import button in .

You can also edit Exported Macros with a text editor and Import them back in if required.

Where Macros are stored

Each Macro is automatically saved as a separate text file with TXT in the Macros folder in Audacity's folder for application data:

Windows: Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\audacity\Macros
Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/Macros
Linux: ~/.audacity-data/Macros

In order to see the Macros folder on Windows, macOS or GNU/Linux, you must show hidden files and folders or type the folder location into your file manager's address bar.

Windows: In the tree on the left of Explorer, double-click "Users" then double-click your username, then on the right, double-click the AppData or Application Data folder and navigate through that. If necessary, show hidden files and folders on or type %appdata%\audacity\Macros or shell:appdata\audacity\Macros into the Explorer address bar then press Enter on your keyboard.

Macros Examples

See the page for examples of using Macros

Recovering corrupted projects in legacy Audacity versions

This article only applies to Audacity versions up to 2.4.2.

If Audacity crashes or the computer loses power, Audacity should normally recover the projects automatically when you restart. The steps on this page describe how to recover audio from the project's _data folder or Audacity's temporary folder if:

Automatic Crash Recovery does not work correctly
You saved a project without apparent crash, but Audacity was shut down before the AUP project file was written or you do not have a usable AUP file.

The steps on this page will only recover unedited recordings (and stereo recordings may be recovered with sections of left and right channel in the wrong channel).

Do not close or save the project if the automatic crash recovery fails to properly recover your project.

If you need to shut down the computer before manually fixing an incorrect Automatic Crash Recovery, force quit Audacity in the system task manager. This will preserve the temporary data for next launch of Audacity.

Location of the project _data folder

If you saved an AUP project file, the _data folder you need to recover from will be in the directory to which you originally saved the AUP file.

Location of Temporary Folder

If you never saved an AUP project file, you need to recover from Audacity's temporary folder. You can see the exact location in Directories Preferences, otherwise you can see the location in the "TempDir" line in the audacity.cfg settings file. By default the Audacity temporary folder should be as follows.

Windows: C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Audacity\SessionData
Mac: /Users/<your username>/Library/Application Support/audacity/SessionData
GNU/Linux: /var/tmp/audacity-<your username>

If you are upgrading from previous Audacity, that version's temporary directory may be changed to the relevant safe location above if the previous location was known to be prone to deletion by cleanup applications or system restart.

Tip: In order to see the default location of the Audacity temp folder on Windows or Mac you need to show hidden files and folders or type the folder location into your file manager's address bar.

In the tree on the left of Explorer, double-click "Users" then double-click your username, then on the right, open the AppData or Application Data folder, then the "Local" or "Locale Settings" folder and finally the "Temp" folder.

If you cannot see those folders, you can type %localappdata% into the Explorer address bar then look for the "Temp" folder. Otherwise, see how to .

Open Finder, use the "Go" menu, choose "Go to Folder" and type the required path.

If that does not work, try to make the Finder show its hidden files and folders by entering the following commands in the terminal:

Manual recovery

If you only have a few AU files to recover, use the "Import Audio" command to open all the .au files from the Audacity temporary folder or project _data folder. Use shift-click or control-click to select multiple files. The files will be in approximately 6-second chunks and will be on separate tracks in the Audacity screen. Files from stereo tracks will alternate between left and right channels.

Click in the Track Control Panel (by the Mute/Solo buttons) of the topmost track.
Shortcut Z or Select > Region > Ends to Zero Crossings.
Edit > Remove Special > Trim.

Play the result.

Cut and paste as needed if any files are found to be in the wrong order or the wrong channel.

Automatic recovery tools

Tools written for legacy Audacity 1.2 can automate data recovery.

All these utilities require the .au files to be input in consecutive alphanumerical order. Audacity names files randomly so files will need to renamed.

Open Audacity's temporary or project _data folder in your system file manager. Sort the files by timestamp order (earliest first), then rename them using a consecutive alphanumerical sequence, lowest number first. An arrangement looking something like this should work:

b001.au 15:56:02 b002.au 15:56:02 b003.au 15:56:10 b004.au 15:56:10

Utilities for renaming files to consecutive alphanumerical order

On Windows, Explorer cannot rename to a sequence acceptable to the recovery tools. You can use instead the Mass Rename tool in the 21-day trial Professional or Ultimate versions of . These versions will let you recover an unedited stereo recording with exact allocation of left and right channels, if Windows is running the file system. The cannot guarantee correct channel allocation.
1. (only in the Professional and Ultimate versions) Click View > Raw Contents to enable maximum date resolution.

Linux command-line alternatives for timestamp sorting

Open a terminal then "cd" into the directory that contains the .AU files.
Type the following command in a terminal to sort and rename the files into numerical timestamp order: mkdir "renamed" | find -type f -name "*.au" -printf "cp %h/%f renamed/%h/%TY%Tm%Td-%TH%TM%TS_%f\n"|sh
The file names produced in the "renamed" folder are not in a consecutive sequence suitable for the Audacity recovery utilities. Instead, use the

Limitations of automatic recovery utilities

There is a 2 GB maximum size for any WAV file created from the reconstructed temporary files. This implies no more than 2000 .au files can be recovered. Sometimes (probably due to bugs in the utilities) there can be errors when recovering only 1000 or so files. In that case you would need to split the .au files in the temporary or_data folder into two or more folders, each containing consecutively numbered files, and recover a separate WAV file from each folder.
Recovery of unedited mono recordings should be correct in most cases.
Recovery of unedited stereo recordings may recover with transposed left/right channels in places. Channel allocation will only be correct if you are using the NTFS (Windows) or

Other Tools / scripts

There is no implication that these tools will necessarily do what you want, nor have they necessarily been tested by Audacity Team.

Scripts for GNU/Linux and Mac

audacity_rescue.sh

This can reassemble a few thousand .au files. It may be simpler to apply (at a bash terminal) than some of the solutions mentioned on this page, particularly for mono recordings.

SoX

Using , make a copy of the temp directory and its files from a mono recording:
cp -r /tmp/audacity1.2-jbn ~/rescue
Convert the AU files into raw (headerless) files. The files must already be time-sorted and numbered with leading zeroes:
for f in *.au ; do sox ${f} -t raw ${f}.raw ; done

Gitbook Markdown syntax

A page showing the Markdown for all the basic and fancy options there are. Also compares it to Github's Markdown. This block is the page description.

Contrast this page to:

raw markdown: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/audacity/audacity-support/main/community/contributing/tutorials/gitbook-markdown-syntax.md
Github's markdown renderer: https://github.com/audacity/audacity-support/blob/main/community/contributing/tutorials/gitbook-markdown-syntax.md

Heading 1

(shows up in the outline)

Heading 2

(also shows up in the outline)

Heading 3

(does not show up in the outline)

Headings can be used anywhere, including inside other blocks.

Inline text formatting options

Bold, Italics, Code, ~~Strikethrough~~, , , , page link: , page anchor link: , colored text, colored background, both colored, LaTeX:

These can be used anywhere.

Lists

Unordered
List

Ordered
List

Task
List

List with
1. sub-items
2. can have

Lists can be used anywhere, including inside other blocks. They can only include inline content and other (nested) lists.

Infoboxes, quotes and code blocks

Infoboxes:

Hint

Caution

Danger

Success

A quote block

These blocks can be used inside of Tabs. The code block can also be used in Expandables, but cannot have other blocks inside it. The quote block and infobox can have headings, inline content and lists inside it.

Images and files

Inline image:

Image block:

Attached file:

Embeds

Embeds cannot be used inside of other blocks except the Tabs block, nor can other blocks be placed inside them.

Tables

checkbox column

text column, center-aligned

number column

select-option column

files column

Ratings column

Select-option and files columns appear empty in Markdown. Avoid using them.

Tables cannot be used inside other blocks except the Tabs block, nor can other blocks be placed inside them. Inline content works inside of text columns only.

Tabs

content of first tab

content of second tab

content of third tab

Tabs cannot be used inside other blocks. Tabs can have most other blocks inside them, except of other tabs, expandables, and API blocks.

Expandable (Details block)

Expandable title

Expandable content

Expandables cannot be inside other blocks. Expandables can have headings, lists, code blocks, and inline content inside them.

Drawings

A Gitbook-specific drawing thing, generating SVGs. Likely useless when using Markdown.

LaTeX

Description

Cannot be used inside other blocks. Can only contain plain text. Unfortunately very tailored towards web APIs only.

New features in Audacity 3.0.2

This page is an overview of prominent new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 3.0.2

Version 3.0.2 is primarily a maintenance release.

Details of all the major changes since 3.0.0 can be found in Audacity 3.0.2.

Overview

Audacity 3.0.2 is about bugfixes for Audacity 3.0.0. Some bugs which didn't show up in our testing of 3.0.0 became apparent once 3.0.0 was being used by more users. We wanted to fix these and also to get more diagnostic information about what goes wrong when SQLite (the database we use) can't read or write a file. So we added more informative diagnostics for when there is an error.

One cluster of bugs we fixed relate to Unicode. Unicode is a system for representing many non-English letters and symbols. We, Microsoft and Apple all have made mistakes with Unicode that affected Audacity 3.0.0. One during 3.0.0 turned out to be a Windows update issue with Unicode input, which was resolved by a later Windows update. Disappearing checkmarks in macOS Big Sur release turned out to be a Unicode issue, believed to be in Apple code, which we in 3.0.2. A with Unicode prevented Audacity working in Korean and Japanese.

Some of our bug-fixes are small changes in areas where the previous Audacity behaviour was not as we wanted. 3.0.2 may only be a 'point' release, but we think it's one most people using 3.0.0 will want.

Bugs we've had trouble with

After 3.0.0 was launched a few users discovered a couple of mysterious bugs which we had not encountered in our extensive QA testing of alpha and Release Candidate builds. These two important bugs that 3.0.0 users saw were hard for us to track down as we could not replicate them. We added extra diagnostic information to help us do that:

Error: Failed to open database file

There was an error which only occurred occasionally for a few users but had us mystified. Usually this seemed to occur when trying to import an audio file, but there may have been other ways it could happen. It did not appear to be causing users to experience data loss or damaged projects. It was this bug:

We added a Show Log to this error message so we could gather more information about this to aid the developers in analyzing the issue. This led to what's probably a solution, as Jack L, with this extra logging, was able to get the problem sufficiently often for us to get a handle on it. This extra information told us that in some circumstances we were trying to access the disk before it was ready again, with back to back requests too quickly. Paul then changed the logic of opening a database so that two important requests were always one after the after. This should address the opening issue. Leland added a retry, so that if SQLite can't yet read the database, it tries again, but fractionally later. The retry timeout should benefit all code in Audacity that reads the database, not just at the time of opening. Jack L then ran his ~~torture tests~~ workload and the problem he experienced was gone.

Even so, because the original error was only occasional, we can't know for sure that it, or similar issues, are gone! We still have the extra logging in Audacity. If you do encounter the dialog indicating a problem, please click on the Show Log chevron to generate the log and send us a copy of the screenshot to the . You may see a variant of the message, "The project's database failed to reopen"

This can normally be resolved by simply exiting Audacity, relaunching and then making the required import of an audio file.

False recovery offered on launch

This is another mysterious issue which only occurred very occasionally and was foxing us.

Sometimes after exiting Audacity without saving the project when offered, on the next relaunch a false recovery can be offered when there is really nothing to be recovered as no crash has occurred to cause this. We think this error had the same underlying cause, but we don't know for sure.

This bug is . If you encounter this and accept this recovery it "recovers" an empty project and no damage is done.

If you do see this error, please let us know what you can of how it happened.

Updating from Audacity 2.x to Audacity 3.x

With the release of Audacity 3.0.0 the project file structure of Audacity was changed significantly with the entire project contained in a single unified database file.

If you have already updated to 3.0.0 you should already be aware of this.

But if you are updating from any earlier 2.x Audacity version please read .

Manage Macros improvements

The Manage Macros dialog has been improved for this release:

The Cancel button has been removed
It is replaced with a Close button
A new Save button has been added to enable you to save the results of editing a Macro.

The Save button is grayed-out until you edit a Macro.

Changes in Macros working on files

We have extended the options in Directories Preferences to include a new entry for Macro output.

If you leave the entry for Macro output blank then Audacity will default to creating a folder called "macro-output" in:

Windows: C:\Users\<your username>\Documents\Audacity
Mac: /Users/<your username>/Documents

Note carefully that this diverges from previous behavior with 3.0.0 and earlier where a "macro-output" directory was created/used in the same directory as the files to be processed by the Macro.

We believe that a single rationalized folder for all Macro output from processing files with Macros is a more sensible approach.

Bug Fixes

P1 Bugs Fixed

Nyquist effects fail silently with One hour plus stereo
Win: Vocal Reduction and Isolation most options fail
Noise Gate fails silently if "hold" is non-zero

P2 Bugs Fixed

Progress dialog interferes with scripting
(Japanese & Korean) "Unable to parse project information"
Noise Gate fails on a one hour stereo selection

P3 Bugs Fixed

VST_PATH environment variable fails for non-standard locations
Nyquist: Audacity crashes when running seq-write-smf
In Macros, Record New Track and Play with a selection do not wait for completion.

P4 Bugs Fixed

Noise Gate 'Level Reduction' has a minimum of -60 dB
Enh: Some preference changes are not written until Audacity exits
Linux: Internal Error at DBConnection.cpp line 275

Links

- detailed release notes for this release of Audacity

New features in Audacity 3.0.0

This page is an overview of prominent new functionality that has been introduced in Audacity 3.0.0

Version 3.0.0 is primarily a release for a unitary, single self-contained, project file.

Details of all the major changes since 2.4.2 can be found in Audacity 3.0.0.

Unitary Project

Audacity 3.0.0 introduces the new AUP3 project format. Project files saved with this version will have an aup3 extension, for example My-Project.aup3. We believe that this new project format will make life easier for Audacity users, as it replaces the previous project storage format - which used an AUP file and its associated _data folder full of little audio clips - with a single project file that integrates those two parts.

The old structure caused too many users to lose or damage their projects by moving or deleting the project components. The new single project file structure precludes that happening.

AUP projects from previous versions of Audacity can be opened or imported in Audacity 3.0.0 (Audacity converts them to the new unified file format).

Note that saving as AUP3 will leave behind the old AUP file and its associated _data folder which you will probably want to delete to recover disk space.

Once you have saved the project in the new AUP3 format they can then no longer be opened in previous versions of Audacity.

The workaround is to Export as WAV files, exporting individual tracks using and then Importing those into older Audacity versions.

Active projects cannot be saved to a FAT/FAT32 formatted drive as FAT is subject to a maximum file size of 4GB which can easily be temporarily exceeded when editing.

Project size

Saved Projects with the new unified file structure should not be larger than similar projects with the old multiple files structure.

As you work on a project, Audacity will consume additional temporary disk space. This is normally released on closing the project. This is not new with Unitary Project File, previous versions of Audacity also used to do this.

You can, if you wish, compress your project removing the temporary storage with:

File > Save Project
File > Exit

Performance

Extensive speed testing has shown that for most work in Audacity the new project file can be a little faster than the old project structure.

This is especially true of using the Effects and Generators which run faster with the new project file.

Closing a project can now take a little longer as Audacity clears up the unused temporary disk space in the file.

You will get a progress dialog informing you about the Compaction progress.

Automatic Recovery

Automatic Recovery (following a crash) is different in Audacity 3.0.0. It is simpler with no orphan block-files or missing block-files to worry about

When Audacity is launched following a crash it will offer to recover the crashed projects.
You can choose to either accept the recovery or to discard the projects.
You can select projects for either action by clicking on their checkbox, or you can select all by clicking on Select.

Temporary work files

In addition to the single database project file the database also creates two temporary work files WAL & SHM files. For example My-Project.aup3-wal and My-Project.aup3-shm. On Mac there is only the WAL file.

These are deleted on closure of the project or on exit from Audacity.

Do not delete them or move these temporary files while the project is open as this will destroy the project.

Windows blocks you from doing this but macOS and Linux do not.

Backing up your project

There is a new backup command for projects: File > Save Project > Backup Project.

This saves a copy of the current project as an AUP3 file, but with a new name. It is the safe and recommended way to make a safety backup copy of a project as you work on it.

This could serve either as a single backup copy of the project, or as one of several incremental copies of the project in the state it had at a particular date and time.
Unlike "Save Project As..." using this command will leave your current project open enabling you to continue working on it.

You are strongly advised to make backup versions of your project at key stages in your project so you can return to that stage if you mess up.

This new command replaces the two previous commands:

File > Save Project > Save Lossless Copy of Project
File > Save Project > Save Compressed Copy of Project

Two new Languages added

Corsican language has been added for 3.0.0, thanks to Patriccollu.
Marathi language has been added for 3.0.0, thanks to Mukul Kulkarni.

Thanks also to all our regular translators who brought translations up to date for 3.0.0.

Label Sounds replaces Sound Finder and Silence Finder

A new analyzer has been introduced called Label Sounds. It supersedes and replaces the old Sound Finder and Silence Finder analyzers.

Label Sounds is a tool which can useful to label the different songs or sections (or silences) in a long recording, such as the tracks from an LP or cassette.

This analyzer is an upgrade of the old Sound Finder from previous versions of Audacity. It is more accurate, and more versatile than previous versions, supporting both region labels and point labels.

Accessed by: Analyze > Label Sounds...

It detects the audio level in the selected track(s). When the track level exceeds a specified threshold level, the audio is considered to be "sound", and when below the level it is considered to be "silence".

There are options to add point labels before or after each detected sound, region labels around each sound, or region labels between each sound (effectively labeling the silences).

You can still continue to use this Sound Finder if it is present in your Audacity app as a result of an earlier Audacity version download.

Enhanced Directories preferences

Default folder locations have been added enabling you to specify the folders to be used for each of the Audacity actions: Open, Save, Import and Export.

If you set a default folder for any of those actions Audacity will always offer that folder location when you invoke that action.

If a particular action's default folder is left blank (default setting) then Audacity will offer the last-used location for that action.

The default setting is for all to be blank.

See Directories Preferences for more details.

Improvements to Macros

Import and Export of Macros

Import and Export of Macros has been added to the Manage Macros dialog.

Only one Macro can be imported or exported at a time.

Comments in Macros

Comments can now be added to Macros to enable you to document what is happening in the Macro.

There is a new command "Comment" in the Macro command set. Editing its parameters enables you to type the text of your comment.

Noise Gate improved

The Noise Gate effect has been improved for version 3.0.0 of Audacity. It now supports faster Attack times (down to 1ms), and provides separate controls for Attack, Hold and Decay. The effect can also process much longer selections in one pass (up to 13.5 hours at a sample rate of 44,100 Hz.)

Multi-view can be set as user-default view

In Tracks preferences you can now set Multi-view as your preferred user-default view for tracks.

Preferences settings that affect Edit behavior

We realized that we had a couple of settings in Tracks Behaviors Preferences that affect the operation of the Cut, Paste, and Delete editing commands in perhaps unexpected ways:

Editing a clip can move other clips
Enable Cut lines

So a new page was added to the Manual to explain the subtleties of these behaviors. See .

Mixer Board improvement

We have changed Mixer Board so that its window always remains on top when it is in use.

Many users have requested this and the original developer always wanted to do this but could not at the time because of issues with the libraries used for this feature.

These libraries have been updated by the provider and we can now make Mixer Board a top window on all three platforms.

Repeat last Generator, Analyzer or Tool

A Repeat last used command has been added for Generators, Analyzers and Tools. These are not in the menus but are "ghost" commands that you can assign custom shortcuts to.

This enables you to simply repeat the last generator, analyzer or tool that you used, with the last settings that you used.

By default, Macro' commands cannot be applied either from a main menu or from a shortcut. They are not "Tool menu" items, and they do not respond to Repeat Last Tool.

However, if a Macro has a shortcut, then it becomes listed in and it will now respond to "Repeat Last Tool", but only if it has been launched via the shortcut. The macro is still not a "Tool menu item", even though the shortcut effectively is.

Nyquist Upgrade

Nyquist has been updated to the latest Nyquist Version 3.16

This has enabled us to clear a lot of long-standing Nyquist-related Audacity bugs.

Bug Fixes

A large number of bugs were fixed for this release.

Here is a small selection of some of the most important.

Key P1 bugs fixed

P1 - Some effects (including equalization effects) delete Envelope Control Points, or do not move them when timeline changes
P1 - Change Pitch effect may create spurious clip at end
P1 - Linux: Crash when applying or previewing Sliding Stretch effect on stereo track

Key P2 bugs fixed

P2 - Mac: COMMAND + V paste limitations in standard file save dialogs
P2 - Mac: Cut/Copy from file save dialogs using shortcuts does not work
P2 - No error/warning message when using a missing aliased audio file

Key P3 bugs fixed

P3 - Noise Reduction preview failure when track rate is different from project rate
P3 - Sound Activated Recording fails when recording meter disabled
P3 - Equalization effects ignore and remove any amplitude envelope

Links

- detailed release notes for this release of Audacity

Keyboard shortcuts

This page lists all commands in the Audacity menus and all pre-defined keyboard shortcuts.

The default Standard set of shortcuts is a reduced set, compared to earlier versions of Audacity, to simplify the set of shortcuts somewhat and to provide greater flexibility for users who wish to create their own shortcuts. There is also an extended Full set of keyboard shortcuts that can be selected from the Defaults button on the Keyboard Preferences dialog. This Full set is the set that was available in Audacity 2.1.3 and earlier. You can use Keyboard Preferences to change or remove existing shortcuts or to assign a shortcut to commands that lack a default shortcut.

Standard shortcuts are shown like so: Ctrl + A.
Shortcuts that are only in the Full set are shown like so: Ctrl + # Extra.
Shortcuts that have not been assigned, that you can assign using keyboard preferences, are shown like so (unassigned).

Some less commonly used commands are not in the default menus but they can be accessed by menu by enabling Show extra menus in Interface Preferences

Note: You can change all shortcuts via Preferences > Keyboard. This includes adding new shortcuts, or removing shortcuts existing by default.

Other Tips and hints:

Mac users: Ctrl = ⌘ and Alt = Option. So, for example, Ctrl + Alt + K = ⌘ + Option + K.
See Audacity Selection for examples of changing track focus and selection.
PAGE UP scrolls the project rightwards and PAGE DOWN scrolls the project leftwards, equivalent to a single click in the white area either side of the horizontal scrollbar. These shortcuts cannot be configured in Keyboard Preferences.

The File Menu provides commands for creating, opening and saving Audacity projects and importing and exporting audio files

Action

Shortcut

Description

File: Recent Files

Lists the full path to the twelve most recently saved or opened projects or most recently imported audio files

Action

Shortcut

Description

File: Save Project

Various ways to save a project.

Action

Shortcut

Description

File: Export

For exporting audio files

Action

Shortcut

Description

File: Import

For importing audio files or label files into your project

Action

Shortcut

Description

The Edit Menu provides standard edit commands (Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete) plus many other commands specific to editing audio or labels

Action

Shortcut

Description

Edit: Remove Special

For more "advanced" removal of audio

Action

Shortcut

Description

Edit: Clip Boundaries

Create or remove separate clips in the audio track. A clip inside an audio track is a separate section of that track which has been split so that it can be manipulated somewhat independently of the other clips in the track.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Edit: Labels

These commands are to add and edit labels.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Edit: Labeled Audio

Labeled Audio commands apply standard Edit Menu commands to the audio of one or more regions that are labeled. The labels themselves are not affected.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Select Menu has commands that enable you make selections of tracks or parts of the tracks in your project.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Select: Tracks

Tracks

Action

Shortcut

Description

Select: Region

For modifying, saving and restoring a selection.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Select: Spectral

For making a selection of a frequency range.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Select: Clip Boundaries

For modifying a selection, taking account of clips.

Action

Shortcut

Description

View Menu has commands that determine the amount of detail you see in all the tracks in the project window. It also lets you show or hide Toolbars and some additional windows such as Undo History.

These commands control playback in Audacity. You can Start, Stop or Pause playback of the audio in your project.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Transport: Recording

These commands control recording in Audacity. You can Start, Stop or Pause recording in your project. You can either start a recording on your existing track or an a new track.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Transport: Scrubbing

Scrubbing is the action of moving the mouse pointer right or left so as to adjust the position, speed or direction of playback, listening to the audio at the same time - a convenient way to quickly navigate the waveform to find a particular event of interest. Speed changes are made by rotating the mouse wheel while scrubbing.

Mixes down selected tracks to mono or stereo tracks

Action

Shortcut

Description

Tracks: Mute/Unmute

Mutes or unmutes audio tracks in the project

Action

Shortcut

Description

Tracks: Pan

Pans left right or center audio tracks in the project

Action

Shortcut

Description

Tracks: Align Tracks

Commands that provide an automatic way of aligning selected tracks with the cursor, the selection, or with the start of the project.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Tracks: Sort Tracks

Sorts all tracks in the project from top to bottom in the project window, by Start Time or by Name.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Generate Menu lets you create audio containing tones, noise or silence.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Help: Diagnostics

A set of diagnostic tools

Action

Shortcut

Description

These are commands which do not appear in any menu.

Action

Shortcut

Description

Audacity 3.x

Audacity Support

hashtagGetting started

hashtagFeatured

hashtagContribute to this site

Audacity Basics

Downloading & installing Audacity

hashtagDownloading through the Microsoft Store

Recording your voice & microphone

hashtag1. Connect your Microphone

Setting recording and playback levels

Saving and exporting projects

hashtagSaving projects

Sharing audio online

hashtagLinking audio.com to Audacity

Customizing Audacity

Using themes

hashtagInstalling custom themes

Effect Presets

Repairing Audio Recordings

Noise reduction & removal

hashtagNoise Reduction

hashtagNoise Gate

hashtagNotch Filter

Re-recording a section

hashtagFixing bad sections as they occur (Punch-and-roll recording)

Removing clicks & pops

hashtagUsing the Click Removal effect

Audio Editing

Using realtime effects

hashtagDownloading & installing realtime effects

Making crossfades

hashtagCrossfading Clips

Speeding up and slowing down audio

hashtagChanging the speed while preserving pitch

hashtagChanging speed and pitch at the same time

hashtagDynamically changing the speed over time

hashtagChanging playback speed

Loudness Normalization

hashtagNormalize

hashtagLoudness Normalization

Macros

Music

Aligning music to beats and measures

Making audio loops

hashtag1. Enable playback looping

Isolating or removing vocals from a song

hashtagVocal Removal with vocals in the center and instruments spread around them

hashtagIsolating Vocals

hashtagUsing AI models to separate vocals

Audio Analysis

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting overview

Installation exit codes

Solving other problems

hashtagCan't open an MP3 file

hashtagNo audio is coming through headphones

Resetting Audacity

hashtagResetting from within Audacity

hashtagPurging the settings folder

Community

Contributing to Audacity

TODO

Untitled

ASIO in Audacity

Synchronizing Tracks

Keeping Tracks Synchronized

Using looping Playback

Mastering for Audio Books

How to use Audacity

Working with Tracks

Answering user questions

Developing Audacity

Finding & testing plugins

Additional resources

Changelog

Older versions

Audacity 3.2.5

Audacity 3.2.4

Audacity 3.0.5

Getting started

Featured

Contribute to this site

Downloading through the Microsoft Store

1. Connect your Microphone

Saving projects

Linking audio.com to Audacity

Installing custom themes

Noise Reduction

Noise Gate

Notch Filter

Fixing bad sections as they occur (Punch-and-roll recording)

Using the Click Removal effect

Downloading & installing realtime effects

Crossfading Clips

Changing the speed while preserving pitch

Changing speed and pitch at the same time

Dynamically changing the speed over time

Changing playback speed

Normalize

Loudness Normalization

1. Enable playback looping

Vocal Removal with vocals in the center and instruments spread around them

Isolating Vocals

Using AI models to separate vocals

Can't open an MP3 file

No audio is coming through headphones

Resetting from within Audacity

Purging the settings folder

Changes and improvements since previous version

Contents

Getting started

Featured

Contribute to this site

Downloading through the Microsoft Store

Installing custom themes

Using the Click Removal effect

Crossfading Clips

Downloading from the Internet

Repairing individual clicks

Silencing the section

Crossfading between Tracks

Linking audio.com to Audacity

Noise Reduction

Noise Gate

Notch Filter

Normalize

Loudness Normalization

Changing the speed while preserving pitch

Changing speed and pitch at the same time

Dynamically changing the speed over time

Changing playback speed

Vocal Removal with vocals in the center and instruments spread around them

Isolating Vocals

Using AI models to separate vocals

Resetting from within Audacity

Purging the settings folder

Can't open an MP3 file

No audio is coming through headphones

1. Connect your Microphone