Status Bar

The Audacity Status Bar is to be found at the bottom of the Audacity window, it cannot be relocated or floated. Its function is to display information about the current state of Audacity.

Audacity version

When you initally run Audacity the Status Bar will show the version of Audacity that you are running:

Actual Rate

Once you have started playing or recording the Actual Rate is displayed at the bottom right of the Status Bar. The "Actual Rate" when recording is the rate communicated by the sound card to Audacity; "Actual Rate" when playing should be the rate communicated by Audacity to the sound card.

Recording length

When recording, the audio data is written to your hard disk. For example, if you just press the red Record button without having yet saved a Project, it's written to Audacity's temporary folder. Therefore, the amount of time you can record for is limited by the available disk space on the drive you are writing to. Audacity lets you know the amount of time you can record for based on that remaining space, giving a clear indication in the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen as to how much time you can record for:

The time remaining depends on the current space on the drive, and on the quality (sample rate and sample format/bit depth) you are recording at.

On-Demand Loading

The percentage of the waveform that has been computed is displayed on the Status Bar, as shown at bottom left of the image above. When multiple files are being imported, the Status Bar will display the overall percentage of the multiple tracks that has been computed. To make the Status Bar display the percentage completion of a particular track, move the mouse over that track.

Status Bar showing On-Demand loading showing import complete and waveform calculation 76 percent complete.

Peter 13Aug14: ToDo-2 I plan to replace this image with a W7 Basic theme one.

Mixer Toolbar

When you roll-over the meters in the Mixer Toolbar the Playback and Recording volumes are displayed in the Status Bar.