Interface Preferences

Summary

Behaviors

• Update display while playing: ??Page flips to the right when the cursor travels to the right hand end of the wave display, either during playback or recording. Always keeps the cursor on screen, but may cause breaks in recording or playback if you have a slow machine.
• Closing last window quits Audacity: Sets Audacity to shut down when the last project window you are working is closed. If you turn this off then audacity will keep re-spawning new blank project windows until you do File > Quit.
• Enable dragging left and right selection edges: Lets you manipulate selections by clicking on the edges and dragging them along the timeline.
• Ergonomic order of ausio I/O buttons: Sets the transport control button order as:Pause, Play, Stop, Home, End, Record. Rather than: Home, Play, Record, Pause, Stop, End.
• Automatically fit tracks vertically zoomed: Tracks will resize their height to use the vertical space on screen.
• "Move track focus" cycles repeatedly through tracks: When you use the arrow keys to move up or down a track, moving off one end (top or bottom) moves you back on at the other.
• Editing a clip can move other clips: When you remove audio or add audio using cut and paste, and there is more than one clip in the track, this wil move the other clips that are after the one you are editing. If you don't tick this, it only happens when it absolutely has to to make room.
• Select all audio in project, if none selected: If you try to apply an effect an no audio was selected, Audacity will assume that you intended to apply the effect to all audio. If you don't tick this, you may have menu items greyed out when they need an audio selection and no audio is selected.
• Beep on completion of longer activities: This makes a quiet beep when tasks that take a little while complete. It uses the built-in speaker of the computer. It's useful for visually impaired users. Some PCs do not have built-in speakers, in which case you won't hear anything.

Show / Hide

• Enable cut lines: Enables an optional feature where after every 'cut' a line appears at the cut. The cut lines can be used to undo chosen cuts later. It's more flexible than using undo.
• Show warnings about temp files: ???When Audacity starts up, tells you if there were files 'left over' from a previous run of Audacity.
• Show prompt to save, even if project is empty: When you have been working on a project and the project is now empty, i.e. it has no tracks in it, should Audacity warn you when you close it? This is what most people would want to happen. If you save the project at this point you're saving an empty project. That's not a good idea unless you've already captured all the audio you want from the project, for example by exporting each track to MP3.
• Show Welcome Message at program start up: Show a welcome message that gives information about the most common issues users run into when using Audacity. You can also show this welcome message from the help menu, so it is OK to switch it off.

Minimum of dB mode display range

• This sets up the scale used for logarithmic waveform displays. Logarithmic waveform displays are selected using the track pop-down menu. -48dB is a good choice for general work.

Other Choices

• Language: Lets you change the language of the menus and other onscreen text to the language of your choice. Simply choose the correct option from the drop-down list. Note that for languages with unusual character sets you need the correct fonts installed. If your menus come up all ???? that's what's wrong.
• Help: 'Standard' is what most people will want. Audacity shows help in its built in browser, taking it from locally stored html files. 'In Browser' is similar, the local help files are used but now in your default browser. 'Internet' will always use the latest help files from the internet, and wil open your default browser to do this.
• Solo Button: The solo button on the track panels can behave in three different ways. 'Standard' is what people used to mixing desks and other software will expect. If any one solo button is down the mute buttons are ignored. They are only relevant again onece all solo buttons are up. 'Simple' is easier to explain. In this mode 'solo' genuinely means just one track should play, and the solo buttons act as a shortcut way of setting the mute buttons. 'None' is even simpler. There are no solo buttons and you select the tracks to play using just the mute buttons. If you use the 'Standard' mode and sometimes want solo to mean 'solo' you can click 'shift' whilst clicking solo to get it.