FAQ:Installation, Startup and Plug-ins
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Contents
- 1 How do I install and update Audacity?
- 2 How do I uninstall Audacity?
- 3 What should I do if I have problems downloading or installing Audacity?
- 4 How can I solve Audacity not appearing or crashing on launch, or crashing after I add a plug-in?
- 5 How do I download and install the LAME MP3 encoder?
- 6 How do I download and install the FFmpeg Import/Export Library?
- 7 What Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins does Audacity support and how do I install them?
- 8 What should I do if I get errors building Audacity?
- 9 Windows: How can I fix "Entry Point Not Found" when first launching Audacity on Windows XP?
- 10 Windows: How can I make Audacity launch when I double-click a WAV or other audio file?
- 11 Mac OS X: Why do I see "unidentified developer", "Mac App Store" or "damaged" messages when I launch Audacity?
- 12 How do I reset my Audacity configuration settings?
How do I install and update Audacity?
- Windows: See Installing and updating Audacity on Windows
- Mac OS X: See Installing and updating Audacity on Mac OS X
- GNU/Linux: See Installing and updating Audacity on Linux
How do I uninstall Audacity?
Windows
Audacity can be uninstalled by choosing "Add/Remove Programs" or "Uninstall a application" in the Windows Control Panel. Select "Audacity" from the list and follow the instructions which will launch the Audacity uninstall application. Make sure you quit Audacity before uninstalling, or you will receive errors that some files could not be removed.
If the Control Panel cannot uninstall Audacity, open the folder in which you installed Audacity and double-click "unins000.exe" (this file might have other numbers in the name). This requires "unins000.dat" (or similar) to be present in the installation folder.
If you still cannot uninstall Audacity, download the installer again. Install Audacity to the same location you installed it to before (which happens by default). This will replace the uninstall files with good copies, then you can run the uninstaller again.
Uninstallation leaves your Audacity settings intact, in case you want to install Audacity again at some time in the future. If you want to remove your settings as well, delete Audacity's folder for application data whose location is given here.
Mac OS X
Quit Audacity then drag the entire Audacity folder to Trash.
What should I do if I have problems downloading or installing Audacity?
If you can't download Audacity from our official download page http://audacityteam.org/download/ please check at http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ to see if the problem is with your connection. If the downloaded setup file is corrupt, it's a very good idea to clear the download list or cache in your browser or download manager then try downloading again.
If problems persist, please let us know at our feedback address.
How can I solve Audacity not appearing or crashing on launch, or crashing after I add a plug-in?
Incompatible audio device or audio drivers
If the Audacity hang or crash occurs after you added or enabled a new audio device, try removing or disabling that device (or updating its drivers) then restart Audacity. If the problem occurred after a driver update, try rolling back to the previous set of drivers. On Windows, you can revert driver changes caused by Windows Update.
If the entire computer crashes, reboots or displays a blue screen message when you launch Audacity, this is almost always due to a bad or mismatched audio driver (or due to a system driver conflicting with your sound device). See how to inspect the computer's memory dump or test its memory to diagnose crashes.
LADSPA, LV2, VST or Audio Unit plug-ins
A hang or crash could occur after you use the Plug-in Manager: Effects, Generators and Analyzers dialog to add new LADSPA, LV2, VST or Audio Unit (Mac OS X) effects. The crash or hang could occur immediately after pressing OK in the dialog, when using an effect, when exiting Audacity or when restarting it next time.
If Audacity crashes immediately after you enable one or more effects in the Plug-in Manager dialog, the effect(s) that crashed should be disabled next time you launch Audacity. They will be relisted in Plug-in Manager as "New" rather than "Disabled". If Audacity crashes when an effect is launched from the Effect Menu or applied to the audio, you can restart Audacity then try disabling the effect in the Plug-in Manager. This effect will then not be available in Effect Menu.
Sometimes it may not be obvious which effects to disable to solve a hang or crash. You might be able to identify offending effects from Audacity.zip if there is an Audacity Debug report. You can also try Windows Event Viewer (or more easily on Windows Vista and later, type "Reliability" without quotes in the Search box to open Reliability Monitor). To view Mac OS X reports, open /Applications/Utilities/Console.app then look at the System Diagnostic Reports.
Should it remain unclear which effects are responsible, it may be useful to reset Audacity to load only the enabled effects that it had on first installation. To do this, go to Audacity's folder for application data as follows:
- Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/Windows Vista: Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Audacity\ (or type %appdata% in Explorer)
- Windows XP: Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Audacity\ (or type %appdata% in Explorer)
- OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/ (use Go > Go to Folder in Finder)
- Linux: ~/.audacity-data/ .
In that folder, delete the pluginregistry.cfg and pluginsettings.cfg files and restart Audacity. Then you can use the Plug-in Manager dialog to selectively enable effects to find the possible culprit.
Resetting Audacity Preferences
The Audacity window could also fail to appear due to some Audacity configuration problem. To solve this, try resetting the Audacity Preferences.
Viruses and anti-virus scanning
Conflicts with other applications such as security or anti-virus applications can occasionally cause Audacity not to launch. Try turning off some of the more advanced behavior detection settings in the security application, or add an exception to its settings to make Audacity a trusted application. Conversely if you have not run a virus scan for a while, update your security application to the latest virus definitions and perform a thorough scan in case a newly acquired virus is the problem.
How do I download and install the LAME MP3 encoder?
- Windows: See the LAME installation section on the Installing and updating Audacity on Windows.
- Mac OS X: See the LAME installation section on the Installing and updating Audacity on Mac OS X.
- Linux/Unix: See the LAME installation section on the Installing and updating Audacity on Linux.
How do I download and install the FFmpeg Import/Export Library?
Because of software patents, Audacity cannot include the FFmpeg software or distribute it from its own websites. Instead, following the links below to instructions to download and install the free and recommended FFmpeg third-party library.
- Windows: See the FFmpeg installation section on the Installing and updating Audacity on Windows.
- Mac OS X: See the FFmpeg installation section on the Installing and updating Audacity on Mac OS X.
- GNU/Linux: See the FFmpeg installation section on the Installing and updating Audacity on Linux.
What Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins does Audacity support and how do I install them?
You can download and install plug-ins to add extra functionality to Audacity. Plug-ins can give you extra effects, or more audio generation and analysis capabilities.
VST (Virtual Studio Technology): Audacity supports almost all VST effect plug-ins on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux including "shell" VST's that host multiple VST effects.
LV2 is a more advanced evolution of the LADSPA plug-in architecture which was originally developed on Linux. VAMP plug-ins are usually for analyzing audio so will appear under Audacity's Analyze Menu.To add new plug-ins please see:
- Windows: See Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on Windows.
- Mac OS X: See Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on MAC OS X.
- GNU/Linux: See Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on Linux.
What should I do if I get errors building Audacity?
Audacity provides ready-built installer applications for Windows and Mac, but Audacity can also be built from source code on any platform. With a little knowledge, building is a great way to customize Audacity! For help, please see the Wiki documentation for Windows, Mac and Linux.
If you still cannot build Audacity, please ask on the Compiling Audacity board on the Forum.
- Please tell us whether you are building from a release tarball or Audacity HEAD.
- On Windows, please give all the instances of "ERROR" in the Visual Studio output window (including Linker errors).
- For Mac and Linux, please provide the last lines of the configure or make output that fail.
- For Linux, also tell us which distribution and release you are using (for example, Ubuntu 11.10 or Fedora 16).
Windows: How can I fix "Entry Point Not Found" when first launching Audacity on Windows XP?
This error occurs if you are running less than the latest "Service Pack" of updates for your Windows XP system.
- To run on Windows XP 32-bit, Audacity requires the latest Service Pack 3.
- To run on Windows XP 64-bit, Audacity requires the latest Service Pack 2.
To check if you have 32-bit or 64-bit XP, click Start, then Run, then type "winmsd.exe" (without quotes) and click OK. In "System Summary", the "Processor" item will start with x86 for a 32-bit system or IA-64 or AMD64 for a 64-bit system.
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Please note that Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft so even with the latest Service Pack it will be unpatched against any new security vulnerabilities that appear. Consider if you can update to the much more secure Windows 7 or Windows 8. If this is not practicable, you could try installing a Linux operating system instead. Most versions of Linux are free and all are very secure.
If you remain with Windows XP, ensure you have a good third-party anti-virus application, though be aware that this will not give you complete protection if previously unknown security threats emerge. For extra protection, install the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) from Microsoft on your XP system. This application is quite easy to use. |
Windows: How can I make Audacity launch when I double-click a WAV or other audio file?
For Windows Vista and Windows 7, click the Windows Start button, then Control Panel, then "Programs". Under "Default Programs", click "Make a file type always open in a specific application". Choose ".wav", ".mp3" or your chosen extension, then click "Change application..." and browse for Audacity to associate it with that file type.
Another method is to use the Windows Start button, type "Run" (without quotes), press ENTER, then type %windir%\system32\control.exe /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms /page pageFileAssoc and press ENTER.
On any version of Windows you can instead set the default association of a file type with Audacity by right-clicking over any file of that type, choosing "Open with" then "Choose default application...".
Mac OS X: Why do I see "unidentified developer", "Mac App Store" or "damaged" messages when I launch Audacity?
On OS X 10.7.5 and later, the Apple Gatekeeper feature controls launching of applications downloaded from the internet. If Gatekeeper won't launch Audacity because it is "from an unidentified developer" or "not downloaded from the Mac App Store", right-click or control-click on the Audacity application in Finder, choose "Open", then in the dialog box that appears, choose "Open". You should then be able to launch Audacity normally on subsequent occasions.
Occasionally, you may see an error message that "Audacity is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash." If this message persists when you right-click or control-click over Audacity, try downloading Audacity again from http://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac.
If necessary, you can open . Under the header "Allow apps downloaded from:", choose "Anywhere". On macOS Sierra 10.12, the "Anywhere" choice is unavailable by default, but you can make the "Anywhere" choice appear and set Gatekeeper to this choice by opening a Terminal and entering
| sudo spctl --master-disable |
then entering your password when prompted.
Audacity should now launch. It would then be advisable to change the "Anywhere" preference in Gatekeeper back to a more restrictive setting. On macOS Sierra, doing so will remove the "Anywhere" choice once more.
How do I reset my Audacity configuration settings?
Uninstalling Audacity does not automatically repair or reset your configuration settings in Audacity Preferences. If you are trying to fix a problem with Audacity, take one of the following actions.
- Quit Audacity and reset Preferences using the audacity.cfg settings file. There is then no need to uninstall and re-install.
- Alternatively, Windows users may run the installer and in the "Select Additional Tasks" screen, put a check in the "Reset Preferences" box. Complete the installation. On launching Audacity, a dialog will appear where you can confirm if you want to reset preferences just this once, or not.
See also:
- Windows: How do I uninstall Audacity?
- How can I solve Audacity not appearing or crashing on launch, or crashing after I add a plug-in?
