Menu What you'll find there

Audacity (Mac About Audacity, Preferences, System Services, Show and Hide
Only) Audacity and other applications, and Quit.

File Working with Audacity project files and other audio files.

Edit Altering the audio in your project.

Select Making selections of tracks, or within tracks, in your project.

View Change Zoom levels. Show clipping, Undo History, Mixer Board,
Toolbars and Karaoke window.

Transport Control recording and playback.

Tracks Adding, aligning and labeling audio tracks.

Generate Creating new audio in your project. Audio generating plug-ins will
also appear here.

Effect Processing the audio in your project. External Effects plug-ins will
also appear in this menu.

Analyze Analyzing the audio in your project. External plug-ins that act on
audio but do not produce audio output will appear here, as well as
tools like Silence Finder and spectrograms.

Window (Mac Minimize and zoom windows, choose the project window to bring to
Only) the front.
Tools Additional menus for Macros and other plug ins.

Extra The Extra menu provides access to Toolbar operations and to extra
commands for track focus and movement of the editing or playback
cursor that are not available in the default Audacity menus. These will
be of most interest to visually-impaired users or those who have
difficulty using the mouse.

Shortcuts can be assigned to these commands if required.

Help Short and full Help; capture Audacity screenshots; download current
Audacity; audio device information; show the Log and generate
support data; Audacity version number, license and build information.

Pause Transport > Playing > Pause, Transport > Recording > Pause or P
Click Pause to temporarily pause playing or recording without losing your place. Click Pause a second time to
resume.

You can also click Pause before clicking Record, then click Pause again to start recording. On some systems
or devices, "arming" recording in this way with the stream already open might start recording more quickly.
Note that in earlier versions of Audacity while you were in Pause mode, editing and other commands were
grayed out and unavailable except for Real-time preview effects. This has now changed so that invoking an edit
command while paused will stop playback and call the command.

Play Transport > Playing > Play/Stop or Space

Play: playback begins wherever the editing cursor is. Otherwise, if an area of track is selected, only
that selection will be played.

Loop Play: play the track or selection over and over until you stop. Hold down Shift while clicking
Play. This causes the button image to change to Loop Play .

You can use the Shift + Space shortcut to start Loop Play instead.

Play Cut Preview: play audio either side of a selection to preview what deleting the selection will
sound like. Hold down Ctrl ( ⌘ on Mac) while clicking Play.

Alternatively you can use the C shortcut to preview the cut. This also causes the Play button image to
change to Play Cut Preview.

You can press when there is already playback or when playback is paused to
restart playback immediately from the editing cursor or selection.

Stop Transport > Playing > Play/Stop, Transport > Recording > Play/Stop or Space

Stops playing or recording immediately, and releases Pause if depressed. You must stop playback or
recording before you can use the "Skip" buttons below.

Skip to Start or Home

Move the cursor to the beginning of the project. This is useful if you want to play everything, or record a new
track starting from the beginning.

Holding down Shift while clicking extends a selection region from the cursor
position or current selection region to the start of the project.
 Skip to End or End

Move the cursor to the end of the project.

Holding down Shift while clicking similarly extends a selection region to the
end of the project.

Record Transport > Recording > Record or R

Record: Clicking Record or using the R shortcut always begins recording at the end of the currently
selected track(s).

Tools Toolbar
Tools Toolbar enables your current tool for tasks such as selection, volume adjustment, horizontal zooming or
audio time-shifting. Click another button to change tool or to go back to your previous tool.

Click on the image to learn more

Previous / Next Shortcuts A Extra D Extra

There are two keyboard shortcuts that enable you to navigate through the various available tools:

 A Extra
This shortcut cycles backwards selecting each tool in turn, returning to the Multi tool after the
Selection tool
 D Extra
This shortcut cycles forwards also selecting each tool in turn.
Note carefully that these two shortcuts will only be available if you select the Full set of
shortcuts in Keyboard Preferences. They are not available in the default Standard set of
shortcuts.
 Selection F1

Click to select a start point for audio playback, or click and drag to select a range of audio to play or edit.
You can also create a selection region between two points by clicking at one point, then holding down
Shift while left-clicking at the other point.

Envelope F2

Allows smooth volume changes to be made over the length of a track by means of embedded volume
"control points". Click in the track to create a control point, then set the volume of that point by dragging
one of its four vertically arranged "handles". When you create other control points at different levels, a
smooth curve is interpolated between them. Dragging either the top or bottom handle ensures you can
never distort the track by dragging outside its original volume envelope. Dragging an inner handle allows
you to amplify a quiet piece of audio beyond the original volume envelope of the track.

Draw Samples F3

Draw Tool enables you to manually redraw the waveform; it can thus be used to make volume changes to
individual samples or to effect repairs to clicks/noise.

Zoom F4

 Left-click zooms in one step at the position of the mouse pointer.

 Click and drag zooms in to the dragged region. The drag draws a dotted region in the waveform which is
fitted to the entire track width when you release the drag. No Audacity selection region is created.
 Shift and left-click or right-click zooms out one step at the position of the mouse pointer.

 Shift and drag zooms out based on the dragged region. The drag draws a dotted region in the waveform
and when you release the drag, the audio at the left edge of the dotted region is repositioned at the start of
the visible waveform. The smaller the dragged region, the farther the audio will be zoomed out. No
Audacity selection region is created.

 Middle button zooms in or out to Audacity's default zoom level of about one inch per second.

 If you commence a drag to zoom by mistake, you can press Esc before releasing the mouse to cancel
the zoom operation.

 You can also zoom without using Zoom Tool by using keyboard shortcuts, or the zoom buttons on Edit
Toolbar.
 Time Shift F5

Selecting this tool lets you synchronize audio in a project by dragging individual or multiple audio tracks, note
tracks or audio clips left or right along the Timeline. Also use this tool to drag individual tracks or clips up or
down into another track. To use Time Shift Tool, click in the track or clip you want to move, then drag in the
required direction.
Dragged audio cannot paste into other audio, so the area being dragged into must have sufficient space to
accommodate the drag.

See this page for more details.

Multi-Tool F6

Combines all five tools in one. One tool is available at a time, according to the mouse position and modifier key
chosen. The shape of the pointer changes to show which tool is active. If you exit Audacity with Multi-Tool
Mode selected, it will be also be enabled next time you launch Audacity. More details on Multi-Tool Mode here.