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Audacity 3.x

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How-Tos and Tutorials for Audacity

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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 and installation process.

Installing from the Microsoft Store

You can install Audacity from the .

Recording your voice with a microphone

Audacity can use many types of microphones and other audio devices to record audio.

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.
If you have a mic with a 3.5mm jack, plug it into a mic-in port.
If you have an XLR mic, plug it into an XLR-USB audio interface and the interface into the USB port.

How you will connect your microphone will depend on your computer model and your microphone. Use your manuals or support pages for further information. You may need adapters if your computer does not have the correct ports for your microphone.

Note: Many laptops and notebooks feature built-in microphones. While they may be good enough to record your voice properly, other recordings that they produce will often be somewhat unpleasant.

2. Select your Microphone

Once you have plugged in your microphone into your computer, select the microphone to record from the list of available recording devices in the Audio Setup toolbar.

This toolbar may display some unexpected devices here (for example, webcams), as well as virtual devices (software pretending to be a microphone). Select the entry that matches the microphone you actually want to use. The Audio Setup toolbar will also allow you to select whether you'll be recording in Mono or Stereo.

Note: Most microphones are in Mono, and Mono is generally the best choice for recordings. Only use Stereo if you do need directionality.

3. Test your Settings

Select the microphone icon and choose Start Monitoring (shown below) and tap your mic with your finger. If you see the green bar move when you tap the mic, you have selected the correct device in the previous step.

Then try to speak in a normal volume. In general, the volume should remain in the green zone throughout (in general, between -18 and -12 dB is best).

Caution: If your input volume is too low (below -42 dB) or too high (frequently in the red area), your audio quality will likely suffer. See this page for how to fix this:

Next, make a test recording. To start recording your voice in Audacity, simply press the red record button.

When you have ended the recording, listen back to it. If everything went well, you should now hear your voice clearly. Once you hear your voice clearly, you should now be able to continue with the next steps.

Common problems

If you run into trouble with any of these steps, you may find the solution here:

Next Steps

Once you've made your recording, make sure to save your work. This applies regardless of whether you intend on editing it later or not.
If you want to edit your recording afterwards:

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.

The slider with the speaker icon sets the playback volume relative to the system volume. It does not affect the volume of exported files, use the gain sliders on each track to edit those.

Recording desktop audio

Audacity can record computer audio (including sound from YouTube, Spotify and more).

1. Select the loopback device

Click on Audio Setup and select Windows WASAPI as the Host.

Editing audio

This page is an introduction tutorial to editing in Audacity. It covers how to import files, making cuts, rearranging clips, and applying effects!

Importing a file

To start editing, you need some sort of sound to edit. You can either , or import an existing sound file (for example, an MP3 or WAV) by dragging & dropping it into the project window. You can also import files via the File > Import menus.

Saving and exporting projects

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

☁️ Saving projects to cloud

Cloud projects have backups and versioning, ensuring you'll never lose your work, even if your computer was to fail. Additionally, you can easily share them with collaborators.

To save a project to the cloud, first go to

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 . 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.

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

Custom themes commonly are distributed as files called ImageCache.png. You can find some custom themes here:

To install a custom theme, place the ImageCache.png in the following folders. You may create the folders if they aren't present.

Windows: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Audacity\Theme\custom\
MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/Theme/custom/
Linux: ~/.local/share/audacity/Theme/custom/

Then,

restart Audacity,
open the Preferences -> Interface page,
select Custom as the theme and
press OK.

Note: Custom themes are optimized for one version of Audacity only and may break from one Audacity version to the next. If a theme looks different from the screenshots, that's likely the reason.

Creating custom themes

For instructions on creating custom themes, please check the following page:

Installing plugins

You can download various plugins here:

Most plugins get automatically activated once you install them on your system.

Caution:

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).
If you don't need to tweak the settings after setting the noise profile, you can press Ctrl+R

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).
Press OK to apply the effect.

Tips:

The "Mains hum" of the electricity grid is 60Hz in north and middle America, and 50Hz in most other countries.
Use Analyze > Plot Spectrum... to find the offending frequency if you're not sure where it is.

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:

Make sure that Overdubbing is turned on in Transport > Transport Options.
Make sure that your latency settings are correct.

If your audio recording broke and you immediately noticed it (for example because you misspoke your script or had to cough), it is possible to stop the recording and immediately fix the mistake by using Punch-and-roll recording. To use it:

Record as normal until you make the mistake.
Stop the recording.
Choose a splicing point by clicking into the audio before the mistake happens. For spoken content, this should be between words so you can drop in easier. Note: All audio on the track after the splicing point will be deleted.

Tip: You can change the amount of pre-roll audio and crossfade in the Preferences > Recording in the Punch and Roll recording section.

Fixing a bad section afterwards

If your audio recording broke at one specific point in time (for example because an ambulance drove by), but you only notice it after having recorded everything, it is possible to re-record this section using punch-in repair.

Best Practice:

Make sure that Overdubbing is turned on and Software Playthrough is turned off. Both settings can be found in Transport > Transport Options

To use it:

Select the bad part of the recording and silence it. You can do this by clicking the Silence Audio Selection button (found next to the undo and cut/copy/paste buttons), or by pressing Ctrl+L (Cmd+L)
Select a couple of seconds of audio before and after the bad part. With overdubbing turned on, recording will playback the recording back to you and help you match the timing.

To hide the cut a bit better, a crossfade may help:
If your new take is slightly longer or shorter than the gap left in the original recording, you can split the clip:
You can use a similar technique to continuously fix mistakes as they occur during a recording session using

Removing clicks & pops

Using the Click Removal effect

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

To use it:

Select the audio you want to remove the clicks from. Tip:
Go to Effect > Noise Removal and Repair > Click Removal
Set the threshold and max spike width. The default should work in most cases. You can preview the effect to get a feel of how it'll affect the track.
Click OK to apply the effect.

Caution:

The Click Removal effect requires a somewhat large audio selection (4096 samples) to function. It may not work when selecting single clicks.
If you have rapid soft clicks (such as the crackling of Vinyl), using

Repairing individual clicks

The Repair effect can be used to repair short clicks. To use it:

Select a short (max 128 samples) part of audio. Tip: You can set the selection clocks in the bottom toolbar to display start and length of the selection, and change the clocks to display samples rather than milliseconds.
Go to Effect > Noise Removal and Repair > Repair.

Silencing the section

In most cases, having brief amounts of silence is preferable to loud clicks, so completely muting clicks is a valid strategy if other methods fail. For this, simply select the click and press the Silence button (Shortcut: Ctrl+L / Cmd+L).

Audio Editing

Using master effects & realtime effects

Adding effects to a track

You can add realtime effects using the following steps:

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:

Have two clips in one track.
Select the region you'd like to apply the crossfade to. Try to select roughly the same amount of time in both clips.
Note: Any empty space between the clips will be automatically removed and ignored in the crossfade.
Use Effects > Fading > Crossfade Clips to crossfade the clips.

Crossfading between Tracks

To crossfade between tracks, use the following steps:

Position the clips on the tracks so that they overlap in the range you want to crossfade, and select the audio in the overlapping region in both clips:
Use Effects > Fading > Crossfade Tracks to crossfade the tracks.

Speeding up and slowing down audio

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

Changing speed while preserving pitch

In Audacity 3.4 and onwards, holding Alt (macOS: Option) while hovering over the edge of a clip shows a clock cursor (shown below). Once it appears, dragging the edge inwards or outwards lets you change the speed of a clip. This action is repeatable as many times as you like.

To change the speed to precise values, right-click the clip header and select "Change Speed". This will open a dialog in which you can type in a number.

Additionally, if you want to render the stretching, that option is in the same right-click menu.

Note: When applying an effect directly to the waveform (as opposed to ) will render clip stretching for your selection. Rendering clip stretching multiple times incurs some loss of quality.

Dynamically changing speed and pitch 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.

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

Note: A time track always affects the entire project. Therefore, you can only have one time track per project.

Changing speed and pitch of a clip

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

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

Using the Change Tempo and Paulstretch effects

Caution: The Change Tempo and Paulstretch effects cause permanent artefacts in your audio. It is advised to use the non-destructive methods described above to achieve the best quality.

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

Changing pitch

Audacity can make audio sound higher or lower

Changing pitch per clip

You can change the pitch of a clip by selecting the clip, and then pressing Alt+↓↑ to change the pitch by a semitone. Alternatively, you also can click on the overflow menu (...) in the top right of the clip, and then Pitch and Speed... to change it via a dialog. You can also use the dialog to change the pitch by cents instead of just semitones.

Once you have changed the pitch, the clip will have an indication of how much it's been changed:

You can change pitch at any time by clicking on the indicator, or reset it by Ctrl+clicking it (macOS: Cmd+clicking) .

Pitch correction of an entire track (Auto-Tune)

While Audacity does not have any pitch correction natively, you can use plugins such as for this task. See and on how to use these plugins.

Changing pitch for an arbitrary audio selection

Caution: This method permanently alters the audio data and cannot be changed later.

To change the pitch of an arbitrary selection of audio, go to Effects -> Pitch and Tempo -> Change Pitch.

Mixing and panning tracks

Using the Track Controls

You can adjust volume and panning per track on the left-hand side of any track:

Note:

Reducing dynamic range (Compressor / Limiter)

A high dynamic range can lead to quiet parts of a track being too quiet compared to its loud parts, causing the listener to constantly adjust the volume to keep things at an acceptable level. Audacity has several tools to help reduce the dynamic range and increase the loudness of a track.

Compressor

This effect can be found in Effect -> Volume and Compression -> Compressor.

The compressor can be used to reduce the dynamic range by a certain ratio for all sounds that exceed the threshold. Doing so will make the resulting audio quieter, so you need to add make-up gain to make up for that - or, alternatively, normalize your track in a second step. The knee width and smoothing parameters are there to reduce distortion. More information can be found in the manual.

Best practices:

To get started, try a factory preset from the Presets & settings button. This effect comes with useful presets for a variety of content.
Use this effect as a to see a graph of it working in realtime.

Limiter

A limiter is effectively identical to a compressor, with the difference that it's much harsher: While a compressor uses a low ratio and may let a sound exceed the line drawn on the curve temporarily, a limiter does not allow any sound to exceed the threshold.

Best practices:

To get started, try a factory preset from the Presets & settings button. This effect comes with useful presets for a variety of content.
Use this effect as a to see a graph of it working in realtime, and to prevent your project from clipping.

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

Working with audio loops

An introduction of Audacity's loop-based music making capabilities

Getting loops

You can find loops all around the internet, including .

You also can manually convert a section of a song to a loop.

Audio Analysis

Troubleshooting

Error codes

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

Error opening sound device

Learn about causes and fixes for this error.

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.

If the troubleshooting steps aren't working for you, feel free to ask in our communities:

Error opening recording device

Learn about causes and fixes for this error.

Causes

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.

Fixes

You can attempt the common troubleshooting steps to attempt to resolve it

If these troubleshooting steps aren't working for you, feel free to ask in our communities:

Error: Audacity failed to read a file in C: and Error: Failed to Open Database File

Learn about causes and fixes for this error.

Other names

Error code 11
Error code 13

Error code=12: cannot allocate memory (macOS)

Learn about causes and fixes for this error.

Causes

This is caused by an unexpected system state. Specifically, macOS typically allows allocation of 32 instances of shared memory, out of which Audacity requires one to start. However, other apps on your computer may have filled up these allocations, in which case Audacity cannot start.

Fixes

Error FFmpeg:1008

Fixes

To hear your audio on both speakers, make sure you record in mono, and that the track is center-panned.

Uninstalling OpenVINO models

Uninstalling OpenVINO models can be done in the following manner:

Windows

Go to the Windows Settings -> Apps -> Installed Apps and uninstall OpenVINO AI Plugins for Audacity.

Alternatively, you can go to C:\Program Files\Audacity and remove the openvino-models folder, along with modules\mod-openvino.dll.

Special uses

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

Synchronizing Tracks

Synchronizing with claps

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)

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 and then edit the relevant sections.

Exact details can be found here:

Macros Palette

You can apply any of the existing macros using the Macros Palette. To open it you can either:

Use the menu Tools > Apply Macros > Palette, or
Use the Shrink button in the Manage Macros dialog

Once invoked, the Macros Palette window will remain on-screen, actively available, at all times unless and until you dismiss it or close Audacity.

Select Macro

In the "Macro" list, left-click on a Macro (or use Up or Down keyboard arrow) to select the Macro you want to apply.

Apply Macro to

Project

Use the Project button to apply the selected Macro to the current project.

The typical purpose of this option is effect automation - apply a sequence of effects to the project, using effect parameters and an order of applying the effects that you have found to work well for the type of audio you are processing. This saves time and provides consistency in your workflow.

The effects in the Macro are applied to the region of in the selected . Usually the selected Macro would not include an command so as to use the greater flexibility of the .

If an export command is included in the Macro, the entire project audio is exported irrespective of track or region selection. Therefore if the project contains multiple audio tracks, they will be together, unless any of the tracks are muted on the .

If the project has been Saved, then the exported files will be saved in a folder named macro-output. The macro-output folder will be in the location specified in .
If the audio in the project came from an imported file as its initial step (that is, it is a named project), the macro-output folder will also be in the location specified in .
If the project has not been saved and is un-named, the normal dialog will appear enabling you to choose the name and location of the exported file.

Macros will work on pre-existing selections you make in your project prior to running the Macro. But the selection can be over-ridden by your Macro itself as there are macro commands available to effect selections in the audio. In particular All(Select All) will select the entire project and Select which is parameterizable (see the provided Fade Ends Macro for an example where the first and last one seconds of the audio are selected for the fades).

Files...

The typical purpose of this option is batch processing - apply the Macro to multiple audio files so as to apply one or more effects to them, and/or convert them to another file format. You can convert from any file format to WAV, MP3, OGG or FLAC.

Use the Files... button to apply the selected Macro to selected external audio files that are in a single directory.

If you already have audio in the current project window, you must save and close that project using File > before applying a Macro to files.

You cannot apply a Macro to multiple Audacity AUP3 project files, instead you need to use Python scripting.

The selected Macro must include an Export step, otherwise the processed audio will not be retained.

You cannot process (for example, 5.1 surround sound files) using Macros, even if has been set to "Use custom mix". Any multi-channel files you import will be mixed down on export.

A standard File Open dialog box will appear. Choose a directory then you can select one or any number of supported audio files in that directory, including older AUP project files (but not AUP3 project files).
- You cannot select files outside that directory, and files in folders inside that directory will not be processed.
- It is convenient therefore to first put all the audio files you want to process into one folder before applying the Macro.

When a Macro is applied to files, the only option is to import and process the entire file. Thus the entire file will be exported unless an action or effect in the Macro (such as or ) removes some audio.

If modifying the audio before exporting, the function may be useful to select audio to remove or modify.
Some optional

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

The buttons

Expand

Use the Expand to return to the full-size, full-function dialog.

The apply Macro buttons are also available on the dialog - so all Macro operations can be made from that full dialog.

Cancel to exit the dialog

To dismiss the dialog simply click on the Cancel button

Otherwise the dialog will remain open on the screen, but allowing you to perform other Audacity functions.

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.
2. Open the required folder in xplorer2 and sort the .au files by time modified as above.

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 plugin to import the files end-to-end into Audacity automatically in file name order.

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 (Linux) file system and if your file manager supports sufficiently fine date resolution (see the Windows example above). This is because the files for each channel may have timestamps that are too close together to be correctly distinguished by other file systems.

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

Translating Audacity

Translating Audacity is the best way to get involved right in Audacity's UI without having to code.

Audacity is translated into multiple languages by volunteers across the world. You can contribute either using Transifex, or by using a local translation editor.

Using Transifex to translate Audacity

You can find and join the Audacity project at https://explore.transifex.com/audacity/audacity/

Click the JOIN THIS PROJECT button on the right side.
Select the language you would like to contribute to from the dropdown.
Click Join Project (if the language is Available to join) or Request Language if the language you want to contribute to is not available yet.

Once you have been approved as a translator you will receive a notification by email. After that you will see the project in your Dashboard and you can start to contribute.

Click Translate at the top right side
Select Audacity from the Resource Overview panel to start editing
Select the string to translate and type the corresponding translation

To speed up your workflow, various shortcuts are available, which you can see by pressing the overflow menu in the Transifex editor:

The most important one of these probably is Tab, which saves your string and automatically moves you onto the next.

And that's it! Happy translating!

Join the translator community

The translator community exists in two places:

If you have any questions, or want to get notified of upcoming releases in need of translation you can do so here.

Translate Audacity using a standalone application

Audacity uses GitHub and you can explore the available translations at

Each language translation is stored in a PO file. For example it.po is the Italian translation and ko.po is the Korean translation.

To download a PO file from GitHub click on the link for the .po file for your language. On the page you come to, right-click the Raw button and then select then Save target or Save link as. Select the location to place the PO file.

Use the wxWidgets file as a reference to the list of translated languages.

These are some programs you can use to edit PO files:

for Windows, macOS and Linux
for KDE4
for Windows and macOS (beta version)

The following instructions use poEdit 3.1.1 to illustrate the process of translation

If there is no translation PO file for your language create a new one using the following steps:

Download the file from Audacity GitHub
Open poEdit and select Create new... (Create new translation from POT Template)
Select the audacity.pot file and click on Open

Update an existing translation of Audacity

The following instructions use poEdit 3.1.1 to illustrate the process of translation

If you want to update an existing translation

Download the PO file for your language, for example it.po or open a previously translated PO file from your computer.
Download the file from Audacity GitHub
Open poEdit and select Browse files (Open and edit translation files)

Submitting a translation

To submit a translation, please send the completed .po file to the audacity-translation mailing list. A member of Audacity Team will commit the file and send a message to the list confirming this.

Test a translation in Audacity

You can get an up-to-date alpha version of Audacity, NOT suitable for production use, but good for checking translations on, in the nightly version: . From there, you’ll find there are choices of builds for different platforms. Download the right one for your platform.
On Windows, open the “Languages” directory inside the unzipped Audacity folder, then open the directory with the same name as your .po file. On Mac OS X, right-click or control-click over Audacity.app > Show Package Contents then open the relevant LPROJ directory inside the “Resources” directory. On GNU/Linux, open the relevant “locale” directory in usr/share/ or usr/local/share.
If creating a new translation, create a new directory for your language using the correct language code from the wxWidgets

Further information

Please read for more tips on translating the Audacity source code, and to learn how the Audacity software is translated.

Manage Macros

Manage Macros allows you to edit, remove or rename existing Macros or add a new Macro. It also allows you to apply Macros to you project or a set of files.

Any built-in, LADSPA, LV2, Nyquist, VST or Audio Unit (Mac) effect shown in the Effect Menu can be added to a Macro. You can also add plugins in any format that are shown in the Generate or Analyze Menus (including Vamp analysis effects), the built-in Find Clipping analyzer and a number of export commands.

Macros may be applied to either the entirety of the current project or to a selection of files using the Tools > Macros... command.

It is possible to use Noise Reduction in Macros but see Noise Reduction Tips for how the Noise Profile is captured.

The full list of all Macro commands, with descriptions, is available at Scripting Reference.

Accessing Macros

You can access the Manage Macros dialog by using either:

The menu > Manage Macros, or
The Expand button in the dialog.

Select Macro

Select Macro contains a list of already defined Macros. You can define the name of a new Macro and select which Macro is active.

The left hand box in the dialog (labeled Select Macro) contains a list of already defined Macros. Until you add a new Macro, it only has built-in MP3 Conversion and Fade Ends Macros.

Use left-click (or use the Up or Down keyboard arrows) to select the Macro you want to work on

New: Adds a new Macro to the list.
Remove: Remove the selected Macro from the list - grayed out when the Macros that ship as part of Audacity are selected.
Rename...: Rename the selected Macro - grayed out when the Macros that ship as part of Audacity are selected.

Edit Steps in the Macro

Edit Steps lists the sequence of commands in order of first to last (End) for the Macro selected in the box to left.

The Macro can include a number of common Audacity functions and effects to be executed in any order you specify.
To create an audio file as part of the Macro process you must include an "Export" command (such as ).
- The Export command will use the settings you used the last time you used the same command from the File > Export > Export... menu command, or default settings if you have never used that command from the menu.

You can:

Add or remove commands for the selected Macro
Change the order in which the commands execute in the Macro
Edit the parameters for some effects in the Macro

Command

Insert: Insert a new command into the list
Edit...: Edit the parameters of the currently selected command
Delete: Delete the currently selected command in the list

You can also edit an existing command by double-clicking it, or using the Up or Down keyboard arrow to select it and then pressing Space. The parameter settings dialog for that command will be displayed.

Inserting a new command

A few commands are intentionally omitted from the Macro Manager (such as Close:) because they are unsuitable for use in Macros.

To insert a new command in a Macro, left-click or use the Up or Down keyboard arrow to select an existing command and then press Insert. The new command will be placed above this selected command.

The Select Command dialog appears, listing all the available commands. Double-click a command from the list to insert it in the "Command" box, as shown in the image below after inserting "Normalize".

Alternatively, use the Up or Down keyboard arrow to select the command, then press Space.

The full list of all commands, with descriptions, is available at .

Some scriptable commands are particularly useful for Macros. See these pages for details:
- - most commonly useful scriptables.
- - less commonly useful scriptables, but also including Select and Set Track, which combine functionality of several scriptables.

Macro Command Parameters

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.

This example shows the Set Track Status command.

The tick boxes on the left determines whether a feature should be used. When not selected, that feature does nothing.

The second tick box determines whether the feature is set to "on" or "off".

This shows:

The track name will not be changed
Track selectedness will be set to Not Selected
Track focus will be set to Focused

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.

Selections in Macros applied to Project

Macros will work on pre-existing selections you make in your project prior to running the Macro. But the selection can be over-ridden by your Macro itself as there are Macro commands available to effect selections in the audio.

In particular All(Select All) will select the entire project
Select which is parameterizable (see the provided Fade Ends Macro for an example where the first and last one seconds of the audio are selected for the fades).

If you want to select all tracks, maintaining your current time selection, use "Select: First=0 Last=100". It will not waste time twiddling its thumbs on the tracks that are not there.

Selections in Macros applied to Files

When applying a Macro to files there is no pre-existing selection so you will need to create a selection in the Macro if your Macro requires audio to be selected to act on (and most Macros do).

Commands for Exporting audio files

There are four basic export commands available: Export as WAV, Export as MP3, Export as FLAC and Export as Ogg.
- See for details of naming and location of exported files.

Parameters for export formats cannot be set in Manage Macros. To configure export parameters for the Macro, click File > Export > Export Audio... to access the Export Audio Dialog, click Options, set the parameters, press OK then Cancel the export. An audio track must be on screen in order to open the Export Audio Dialog.

Special Export command

There is also a special Export command which enables you to export to a specific target file and format. When using Export2 you have to give the full file name (including path and filename extension).

Note carefully that the filename is not dynamically changeable when running the Macro, once set in the Export2 parameters, so you may wish to create several Macros the Export2 each targeting different file locations, names and filetype.

Example:

"C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\my file.flac" (this works)

Not: C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\my file.flac (the file name is not quoted)

Not: "my file.flac" (no path given)

Not: "C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\myfile" (no file extension)

The quote marks around the file pathing are supplied by Audacity once the Export2 command has been edited in setting up or editing the Macro

When entering the pathing data in the edit parameters dialog for the command you do not put the quote marks for example: C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\my file.flac

Deprecated Export commands

The following two commands are now deprecated and may well be removed in future versions of Audacity. They were part of "CleanSpeech" (which has long been removed from Audacity).

The Export as MP3 56k before and Export as MP3 56k after commands can be used respectively to export "before" and "after" files at 56 kbps at any point in the Macro processing. This allows you to compare the result of one or more effects, or provide files for different purposes with and without a particular effect.

The name of the MP3 exported by the "Export as MP3 56k before" command is prefixed by "MasterBefore_" followed by the date and time. The name of the MP3 exported by the "Export as MP3 56k after" command is prefixed by "MasterAfter_" followed by the date and time.

Comments in Macros

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

Add a comment to your macro using the Comment command and edit its parameters to type the text of your comment.

The buttons

Shrink - reduced Macros Palette dialog

Use the Shrink button to show a reduced Macros Palette dialog with a simple list of the existing Macros, enabling you to apply the Macros but not edit them.

This smaller version is useful for presets. It stays open after applying a macro, so it is a palette of custom functions, and you can pick another and apply that.

Using the Expand button on this reduced dialog will return you to the full dialog.

For more details see the page.

Apply Macro to

Apply Macro to enables you to make a Macro operate on either your current open Project or a set of selected external Files.

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

See for details of how these two buttons operate.

Close to exit the dialog

To dismiss the dialog simply click on the Close button.

If there any unsaved changes you will be asked if you want to save them or not.

See the page for examples of using Macros.

Error: Batch command not recognized

This error may sometimes occur for one or more commands in a Macro when updating from a previous Audacity version. The error may also occur if users sharing Macro have different Audacity versions or different versions of the plugins used in the Macro. The error will occur if:

any command in the Macro uses a different text format than that recognized by the version of Audacity in use
any plugins listed in the Macro are missing, in an incorrect location or are incompatible with the version of Audacity in use.

To resolve these errors, ensure you have compatible versions of all required plugins and that the plugins are . If necessary, use the Manage Macros dialog to delete the command that fails then insert a replacement command for the same effect from the Select Command dialog.

Style Guide

These are the rules designed to give the entire user guide a somewhat unified style. You may apply them with some freedom.

General

The goal of the user guide is to provide explanations on how to perform various tasks in Audacity.

Features vs tasks

Documenting features seems like the obvious thing to do: Audacity has various menus, so better have a list of what every option in that menu does. However, this leads to the situation where some pages are completely unfindable as a reader already needs to know where certain options are in the menu in order to find out what the page would be called. For example, the feature containing the slider for the recording and playback volumes is called Mixer Toolbar. But nobody except the people most intimately familiar with Audacity know it's called that!

To combat this, try to write your guides as a way towards a goal, or a task. The above example, instead of naming the page after the feature, name it after the task it does, so:

Tasks aren't necessarily tied to individual features. For example, can talk about several tools as once as they all are means towards a common goal.

If a feature has many different modes or options that are unrelated to the task you're describing, avoid making long lists of what all the feature can do. Focus on the task-related ones instead.

If a feature has several ways to access it, use the most accessible option. For example, for an "how to play audio" article, simply mention the big green play button and the shortcut Space. Don't also mention Transport > Playing > Play/Stop.

There are some exceptions to this, especially when documenting more "advanced" features like Macros which need extensive guiding about how to operate it. Instead of a linear "go here, then here and there, and then you're done", split them up into sub-tasks (for macros: creating macros, editing macros, etc.) and keep these unrelated tasks on one page. Avoid breaking it down to the point where you are explaining individual buttons (don't say "the cancel button cancels the effect without applying it")

Rule of thumb: If a feature is easy to use, but hard to find, document it like a task, ie answering the question "how do I do x". If a feature is hard to use, document how to use the feature as a series of sub-tasks if possible.

Target audience

Audacity's user base consists largely of casual users. As such, you can't expect the readers of your guide to understand even fairly common audio terms (for example: compressor or loudness vs volume), unless it's directly connected to the topic you're writing about.

For example, if you write a guide about compressing and expanding audio, you don't need to hold yourself up on explaining what a compressor is, since the only people who'll ever end up reading that guide are people who already know about that. However, if you were to mention a compressor on a page about general audio editing, you would need to explain what a compressor is good for.

That said: If it's possible to describe a feature without needing to resort to lingo, use it even if it's slightly less accurate. For example, "punch-in repair" would be the accurate term for , but also is way harder to understand and thus to find.

Scope

While there's a lot of things you can write about in relation to Audacity, keep in mind that this site is focused on user guides (or how-to guides, or tutorials - they all have the same idea). We want to minimize work on contributors while maximizing impact, so guides should be kept as general as possible. Only use qualifiers such as "for podcasters" or "for musicians" if their use case shares almost no resemblance to what everyone else would be doing anyway.

Caution: The following topics are out of scope:

Audio-related content beyond Audacity, like: "how to build a quiet recording booth"
Reviews and recommendations of software/plugins/...

Writing style

You can address the reader directly ("you"). You should remain impartial in the process though, so no "I" or "my".

The overall tone should be friendly but not patronizing, and the language should have a healthy middleground between casual and technical.

Page titles

Titles should reflect the task you're trying to teach. For example, if you're teaching how to add reverb, the title should be "Adding reverb"

The title should be concise (try keeping it below 60 characters).

Page titles should be written in sentence case. So generally, the first is capitalized while everything else is not, except proper nouns and acronyms ("Audacity", "FFMPEG").

Note: When the title explicitly refers to an option within Audacity itself, use the spelling found inside Audacity. So for example, "Using the Noise Reduction effect" would have "noise reduction" capitalized, but "Reducing noise in Audacity" would not.

Introductions

Underneath the title is a field for page descriptions. These descriptions are the first thing users see of the article when looking at Google, or seeing an embed to it somewhere.

As such, they should give a good summary of what the page is going to be: In a few words, how will a goal be achieved? What features will be used?

Instructions

Instructions should be written in a step-by-step list where useful. For example:

Do This
then that
then a third thing

If you need to interrupt the steps for explanations, you can either do

Do this
then that (shift+enter) Note: This is an explanation on a new line
then a third thing

Instructions for different Operating Systems

If instructions are different depending on the operating system or other factors, you can use tabs, like this:

Windows Instructions

MacOS instructions

Linux instructions

Tabs aren't part of standard Markdown, so they probably won't show up properly if you're using github or a local editor. They'll show up just fine on Gitbook though.

Note: Tabs are quite big blocks, visually speaking. When using them, make sure that what you're showcasing is worth this space. For example, if you're just saying that undo is Ctrl+z on Windows and Linux, you can just put brackets behind it for the mac instructions - "press Ctrl+z (Cmd+z)"

Technical explanations, asides, and manual backups

If a task has a main way of working, but may benefit from additional context, you can use the Expandable block:

Further information

You can use various other things in here.

Note that you cannot embed other blocks inside Expandables. You are limited to Paragraphs, Headings (h1, h2, h3), lists (bullet points, numbers, checkboxes) and code blocks. Images are possible, but only as inline (ie inside a paragraph).

Images

You can take screenshots using the clipping tool or tools like ShareX. ShareX has the advantage that it has built-in tools like arrows, step-by-step bubbles and labels which can help you visualize several steps at once.

With images, there always is a tradeoff between easy maintainability, clarity and context. So crop them as much as possible without losing important context, and use them in a way that makes updating them as painless as possible.

Info boxes

Gitbook offers 4 types of info boxes.

Info: Use these for information which is useful to know, but not necessary to fulfill the task. These boxes should be started with

Info:, Note: or Tip: for general additional information
Shortcut:Key + Combination

Warning: Use these for information where things might go wrong and the user might get undesired results. These boxes should be started with

Caution: or Warning: depending on which feels more appropriate in terms of urgency

Danger: Use these for super important information only, where ignoring the danger box would lead the user to irreparable damages (lost data, broken audio, ...). These boxes should be started with

Danger: for super important info

Success: Use these for things the reader should do. These should be started with

Best practice: or Do: for best practices

These info boxes aren't part of standard markdown, so if you're not using gitbook itself, but edit through Github or a local editor, they will look a bit silly in your preview (but show up correctly here).

Video Tutorials

If an image is worth a thousand words, a video tutorial can be worth a million: At it's best, it can tell the entire story the written guide would make in a way that always has all necessary context and requires no lengthy description of where to find things.

However, video tutorials can go out-of-date incredibly quickly and then cause a lot of confusion among viewers.

Because of this, a video tutorial must follow these rules to be added to an Audacity Support page:

The video must clearly state what version of Audacity it's referring to in the beginning.
The video must be in the language of the Audacity Support page it's meant to be embedded in. Right now, that's English only.
The video must be a dedicated Audacity tutorial or how-to guide.
The video must refer to Audacity Support as the place to get up-to-date help from.

Best Practices for Videos

The following points are considered best practice for video tutorials:

Start with the purpose and version number and then go straight into the content: "To do XYZ in Audacity 4.2.0, first go to..."
Use a script which you follow when making your video. This will automatically eliminate the following two points, and also get you a long way towards making subtitles.
Avoid going off-topic, eg "hey guys, and welcome back to another video! my sister's aunt's nephew requested I make a tutorial so he can cook his eggs using Audacity to which I said..."

About this document

This is a living document. It contains the best practices, as determined by the community. Feel free to discuss additions and changes on the discussions page, or in the discord.

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

Getting started

New in Audacity 3.6

Featured

Contribute to this site

Audacity Basics

Downloading & installing Audacity

Installing from the Microsoft Store

Recording your voice with a microphone

1. Connect your Microphone

2. Select your Microphone

3. Test your Settings

Common problems

Next Steps

Setting recording and playback levels

Recording desktop audio

1. Select the loopback device

Editing audio

Importing a file

Saving and exporting projects

☁️ Saving projects to cloud

Sharing audio online

Customizing Audacity

Using themes

Installing custom themes

Creating custom themes

Installing plugins

Effect Presets

Repairing Audio Recordings

Noise reduction & removal

Noise Reduction

Noise Gate

Notch Filter

Re-recording a section

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

Fixing a bad section afterwards

Related pages

Removing clicks & pops

Using the Click Removal effect

Repairing individual clicks

Silencing the section

Audio Editing

Using master effects & realtime effects

Adding effects to a track

Making crossfades

Crossfading Clips

Crossfading between Tracks

Speeding up and slowing down audio

Changing speed while preserving pitch

Dynamically changing speed and pitch over time

Changing speed and pitch of a clip

Using the Change Tempo and Paulstretch effects

Changing playback speed

Changing pitch

Changing pitch per clip

Pitch correction of an entire track (Auto-Tune)

Changing pitch for an arbitrary audio selection

Mixing and panning tracks

Using the Track Controls

Reducing dynamic range (Compressor / Limiter)

Compressor

Limiter

Loudness Normalization

Normalize

Loudness Normalization

Macros

Music

Working with audio loops

Getting loops

Audio Analysis

Troubleshooting

Error codes

Error opening sound device

Error opening recording device

Causes

Fixes

Error: Audacity failed to read a file in C: and Error: Failed to Open Database File

Other names

Error code=12: cannot allocate memory (macOS)