Help Menu

The Help Menu lets you find out more about the Audacity program and how to use it. It also includes some more advanced tools such as for taking Audacity screenshots, or viewing log messages generated by the program.

About Audacity...

Displays the "About Audacity" dialog, containing tabs for:

• Audacity version information, credits and list of libraries used in Audacity
• Build information for the current build, including file format support and enabled libraries and features
• GPL v2 License

Note: on Macs this item is under the Audacity menu.

Quick Help (in web browser)

The "Getting Started" section of our Manual - quick information on how to play, record and edit audio, and export to an audio file like MP3 or WAV.

Manual (in web browser)

Takes you to the main sections of our Manual:

• Tutorials
• Using Audacity - fundamental concepts of working with digital audio
• Reference - all the menus, buttons and controls
• Miscellaneous - including Glossary and Frequently Asked Questions

Screenshot Tools...

Displays the "Screen Capture Frame". This tool lets you capture all or part of your project window to an image file in PNG format. Click the "Choose..." button to pick the location where you want to save the screenshot. Then click the button corresponding to the part of the project window you want to capture. Most of these buttons are self-explanatory.

For "Capture entire window or screen":

• "Capture Window Only" captures the window without its title bar.
• "Capture Full Window" captures the window including its title bar.
• "Capture Window Plus" captures the window including its title bar, plus a small border region outside the window for context.
• "Capture Full Screen" captures the entire computer screen as you see it.

For "Scale":

• The "Sec", "Min" and "One Hour" buttons zoom the project window horizontally so that a little more than the length indicated on the button is shown on the Timeline.
• The "Tracks" buttons zoom all the tracks in the project to a preset height. For example, "Short Tracks" displays the tracks at minimal height so they only show the Track Drop-Down Menu and Collapse/Expand button.

• Screenshot Tools can be handy for capturing:
  • Tracks with their waveform or spectrogram (use any of the "Track(s)" buttons)
  • Plots of amplitude against frequency for a selected region (use any of the "Capture Window" buttons to capture the Frequency Analysis window on its own).
• Limitations:
  • Screenshot Tools resets all the Toolbars to default positions and settings.
  • Some individual parts of the interface cannot be captured, such as menus, and dialogs that do not allow you to click anywhere else while the dialog is open.

As alternatives, you can use File > Print...   to print an image of the current tracks with the Timeline above, excluding the Track Control Panel and vertical scale. Or you can use the operating system commands to capture the entire screen or the active window, then open your favorite image editor and paste then save the image.

Run Benchmark...

Gale 29Oct13: ToDo-2 This is in release builds so ought ideally to have more documentation than the below.

• Peter 2Apr14: A thought: why does Benchmark work with 16-bit sample format when Audacity's default sample format is 32-bit float?
• Gale 06Apr14: I added some text along the lines of Steve's reply to -quality.
• Peter 6Apr14: That's an improvement - is that now sufficient to clear the P2 you set Gale?
• Peter 17Jun14: ToDo-1: My memory tells me that the "Run Benchmark" is only in the alpha nightlies and gets excluded from the release builds. If that is the case then we need to remove or comment out this content.
• Bill29Jul14: wrap this Run Benchmark section in a noexport div, as it appears it is not included in the release versions

Performs a mock editing routine to test how fast Audacity runs on your machine, expressed in terms of the estimated number of simultaneous tracks that could be played at once in a 44100 Hz, 16 bits per sample project.

If the sample rate of the tracks differs from the Project Rate, causing real-time sample rate conversion, the number of tracks you can play may be lower than the Benchmark result. Using stereo or mono tracks, or using the default 32-bit sample format instead of 16-bit should not significantly change the number of tracks you can play.

Audio Device Info...

Shows technical information about your detected audio device(s), including their supported sample rates.

Show Log...

Launches the "Audacity Log" window, which can be kept open while Audacity is used normally. The log is largely a debugging aid, having timestamps for each entry. The Audacity version number is always the first entry at the top. Other log entries are added underneath the version number as needed.

• If you use the optional FFmpeg library, the log shows entries for the steps to load the individual FFmpeg components and whether FFmpeg load succeeded.
• If you export an MP3 audio file, the log shows entries for the steps to load the additional LAME library required for MP3 export, and whether LAME load succeeded.
• If you import an audio file, the log shows the imported file's name and extension, which import libraries attempted to import the file and whether the file import succeeded.
• If Audacity crashes and the Automatic Crash Recovery dialog appears on restarting Audacity, or if Audacity encounters a problem when opening an AUP project file, the log may contain additional useful error details.

Buttons

• Save... : Opens a standard file save dialog where you can save the current contents of the log to a text file.
• Clear: Clears the current contents of the log, then inserts the Audacity version number at the top followed by a "Log Cleared." message underneath, both with current timestamps.
• Close: Closes the log, preserving its current content for the remainder of the Audacity session.

On quitting Audacity the log content is discarded, so if you need to save the log contents, do so using the Save... button before quitting.