Audacity 4.0.0 – Final

Editing clips

• Clips can be selected directly. Click a clip header to select it, or Shift-click to select multiple clips
• Several clips can be edited together. Moving, trimming and time stretching apply to all selected clips
• Clips can be grouped. Groups remain together when moved, copied, pasted or duplicated
• Clips can be placed more freely. They can move between mono and stereo tracks. Moving a clip over another replaces the overlapped part instead of blocking the move
• Splitting has a dedicated tool. Press or hold S, then click the waveform or clip header. Split, split-cut, split-delete, split at silences and split to a new track are also available as commands
• Paste handles more cases automatically. Audacity can create a track when needed, adapt compatible channel layouts and paste audio files from the operating-system clipboard
• Alignment guides, sample-boundary snapping and per-project snap settings have been added or expanded

Interface and tools

• The interface has been rebuilt on Qt, with native high-DPI rendering
• Toolbars and panels can be moved, docked, floated, shown or hidden
• UI layouts can be saved as Workspaces. Audacity includes Modern, Classic and Music workspaces
• Light, dark and high-contrast themes are available, along with accent colors, track colors and several clip styles
• The new Home screen shows recent projects with preview thumbnails

The separate Select, Envelope, Draw and Multi-tool modes have been removed. Their functions are now context-sensitive:

• Volume envelopes are displayed in the Clip gain mode
• Sample drawing becomes available when the waveform is zoomed to individual samples
• Splitting is available by holding S
• Track and effect parameters use consistent rotary controls with fine adjustment and double-click reset
• Sync-Lock has been removed. Delete, cut and paste now have explicit variants for either leaving a gap or moving later material to preserve timing

Playback and recording

• The playhead remains visible during navigation and can be dragged to a new position
• Playback can seek to another position without stopping
• Recording can start anywhere on the timeline and creates a clip at that position
• Loop boundaries and the interaction between playback, selections and loops have been revised
• Punch and Roll, lead-in recording, latency compensation, software playthrough and per-track input monitoring have been rebuilt for the new interface
• Audio Setup now includes system-default devices, refreshable device lists and custom channel mapping. Audacity can follow operating-system device changes automatically
• Official Windows builds include ASIO playback and recording support

Tracks, meters and effects

• Track headers now contain live playback and recording meters
• Preset handling is consistent across built-in, destructive and realtime effects
• Built-in effects, generators and analyzers have been rebuilt for the Qt interface
• Supported plugin formats are VST3, Nyquist, LV2 on Linux and Audio Units on macOS. Audacity can display generated controls when a plugin’s own interface is unavailable
• Spectrogram has been redesigned with clearer guides and rulers, and faster rendering

Projects, import and export

• Audacity 4 uses the new .aup4 project format
• .aup3 projects open and convert to .aup4 without changing the original file. Converted projects cannot be saved back to .aup3
• Older .aup projects can be imported
• Project files store preview thumbnails and Audacity 4’s additional clip and appearance data

Compatibility notes

The following Audacity 3 features are not available in Audacity 4.0, but we’re working on adding them in future releases.

• Time Tracks
• Note/MIDI tracks
• Mixer
• Macro Manager and the scripting pipe
• VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting
• Play-at-speed

Sync-Lock and the old tool modes were replaced by the workflows described above.

Additionally, Audacity 4 ships with some missing exporting and rendering features, analyzers, and effects.