Preferences

Preferences let you change most of the default behaviors of Audacity. The Preferences dialog can be selected from the Edit Menu (or use the shortcut CTRL + P). On a Mac, Preferences are under the Audacity Menu (shortcut CMND + ,).

The Preferences dialog is split into fifteen sections, each of which have their own clickable tab:

Section	What it controls
Devices	Select audio devices and their properties.
Playback	Set playback behavior when previewing audio, or seeking.
Recording	Settings for playthrough, latency, and sound-activated recording.
Quality	Select sample rate and format, conversion trade offs between speed, size and quality.
Interface	Interface behavior, hide and show additional information, preferred dB display range, choose language..
Tracks	Tracks display and behvior, behavior of the Solo button.
Import / Export	Whether imported audio is copied into projects, if tracks are normalized, how audio is mixed upon export.
Projects	What to do when saving a project that depends on other audio files, turn auto save on or off and set auto save interval.
Libraries	Locations of the LAME MP3 and FFmpeg libraries.
Spectrograms	Presentation of spectrogram.
Directories	Location of the temporary files directory, play and/or record using RAM (useful for slow drives)
Warnings	Choose to show or not show warnings when saving projects, mixing down, and when disk space is getting low.
Effects	Enable or disable effects by type: LADSPA, Nyquist, VAMP, Audio Units, VST. Control display of Audio Units and VST effects.
Keyboard	Keyboard shortcuts for commands.
Mouse	Mouse shortcuts for commands.

Note: Choice of export format (WAV, MP3 and others) is made at time of export in the File Export Dialog.

Where are Preferences stored?

Audacity Preferences are stored in a configuration file called audacity.cfg. It is a text file and can be edited with any text editor. The file is stored at:

• Windows: Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Audacity\audacity.cfg
• OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/audacity.cfg
• Linux: ~/.audacity-data/audacity.cfg

However if you a create a directory called "Portable Settings" in the same directory as the Audacity executable, "audacity.cfg" will be stored there instead. This facilitates transfer of the user's customized settings (for example, via a USB stick) if Audacity is used on another computer. Note: a workround is needed where audacity.cfg is on a computer running OS X.

Resetting Preferences

Resetting preferences to factory defaults can sometimes fix freezes, crashes or unexplained behavior. To reset Preferences if you have never used a previous Audacity 1.2.x version:

1. Exit Audacity
2. Delete audacity.cfg
3. Restart Audacity

If you have previously used Audacity 1.2.x, deleting audacity.cfg will roll back those preferences common to 1.2 and 1.4 to their current 1.2 settings (even if you have since uninstalled 1.2.x). To reset 1.4 preferences to factory settings where you have previously used 1.2:

1. Exit Audacity
2. Open audacity.cfg in a text editor and remove all the content except the line "NewPrefsInitialized=1"
3. Restart Audacity

Another way to completely reset 1.4 preferences on a machine which has previously run 1.2 is to delete the old 1.2 settings file as well as audacity.cfg. The 1.2 settings are stored in the "audacity" file in your Library (OS X), the file ~/.audacity (Linux) or the Windows registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Audacity\. Note: Modifying the Windows registry is dangerous - always back it up before modifying it.