Audacity 4.0 Launches with Redesigned Interface and Enhanced Editing Features

Audacity has released version 4.0, marking a significant update with a complete rebuild of its interface using the Qt framework. This overhaul brings native high-DPI support and flexible toolbar and panel arrangements, allowing users to customize their workspace with options like Modern, Classic, and Music layouts. The update also introduces light, dark, and high-contrast themes, along with customizable accent and track colors. A major focus of Audacity 4.0 is the new clip-editing model. Users can now select clips directly by clicking their headers and perform group edits such as moving, trimming, and time stretching on multiple clips simultaneously. Clips can be grouped to maintain their relative positions during editing operations. The software allows clips to move freely between mono and stereo tracks, with overlapping clips replacing parts rather than blocking moves. Splitting clips is streamlined with a dedicated tool activated by holding the S key. The paste functionality has been enhanced to automatically create tracks when necessary and adapt to compatible channel layouts. Alignment guides and sample-boundary snapping improve precision during editing. Playback and recording features have also been refined. The playhead remains visible and draggable during navigation, and playback can seek new positions without stopping. Recording can begin at any point on the timeline, creating clips at the specified location. Looping behavior and input monitoring have been rebuilt to align with the new interface. Windows users benefit from official ASIO support for playback and recording. Audacity 4.0 introduces a new project format (.aup4) that stores additional clip and appearance data, along with preview thumbnails. Projects from previous versions (.aup3 and older) can be opened and converted, though converted projects cannot be saved back to older formats. Plugin support includes VST3, Nyquist, LV2 on Linux, and Audio Units on macOS, with the ability to display generated controls when a plugin’s native interface is unavailable. Built-in effects, generators, and analyzers have been updated to integrate with the Qt interface, and the spectrogram view has been redesigned for clarity and performance. Some features from Audacity 3 are not yet available in version 4.0, including Time Tracks, MIDI tracks, the Mixer, Macro Manager, and certain plugin hosts. The development team plans to reintroduce these in future updates. Additionally, some exporting, rendering, and analysis features are still being completed. This release also includes a new Audacity logo, reflecting the significant changes in the software. The update package was revised to incorporate third-party libraries SoundTouch and sbsms, enhancing audio processing capabilities. Audacity 4.0 represents a substantial step forward in usability and functionality for this widely used audio editing application, aiming to provide a more flexible and efficient workflow for users across platforms.