Preferences

Edit > Preferences or CTRL - P

(Audacity > Preferences or CMND - P on a Mac)

pops up the Preferences dialogue. Here you can change many of the default behaviours of Audacity. The dialogue is split into nine sections, each of which have their own clickable tab:

• Audio I/O : To select Audio devices and their properties.
• Quality : To select data rates and other trade offs between speed, size and quality.
• Audio Files : How and when files are copied, how audio is mixed and preferred audio formats.
• Spectrograms : Presentation of spectrogram.
• Directories : Where temporary files are stored and how often to autosave.
• Interface : Interface behaviour, hiding and showing of additional information, language and preferred dB display range.
• Batch : Used for a chain of commands applied to a number of audio files.
• Keyboard : Keyboard shortcuts for commands.
• Mouse : Mouse shortcuts for commands.

Also see: Where are your preferences stored?