Audacity
2 min read
Audacity is a free, open-source, cross-platform audio editor and recorder (Linux, macOS, Windows). It's the go-to tool for recording voice/podcasts, cutting and cleaning up audio, noise reduction, and quick format conversion. It's maintained by Muse Group (also behind MuseScore) and integrates with their audio.com cloud.
Audacity 4
Audacity 4.0 (released 2026-09-03) is the biggest update in the project's history — effectively a rewrite of the front end.
What changed
• New UI on Qt — the whole interface was rebuilt with native HiDPI rendering, movable/dockable panels, redesigned toolbar and track controls, live playback/recording meters in the track headers, and light, dark and high-contrast themes.
• Clip-based editing model — select clips directly, edit several at once, group clips to move them as one, and drag clips over each other (the overlapped part gets replaced). Clips can move between mono and stereo tracks.
• Split tool — split at the playhead across one or many tracks.
• Clip envelopes — non-destructive gain envelopes and fades per clip, drawn with a redesigned envelope tool and reflected live in the waveform.
• Spectral editing — select frequency regions in the (faster, redesigned) spectrogram and apply effects only there.
• Home screen / project manager — open local projects or audio.com cloud projects, and copy clips between projects.
• Workspaces — save interface layouts per task (podcast editing, music, restoration) and switch between them.
• Labels & markers — mark sections and drop chapter points.
• Recording/playback — record anywhere on the timeline, lead-in recording, seek during playback without stopping, always-visible smoother playhead.
• Snapping — alignment guides, sample-boundary snapping, per-project snap settings.
• Loop region export.
• Plugins — Nyquist and VST3 everywhere, LV2 on Linux, Audio Units on macOS; official ASIO support on Windows.
• Project format — new .aup4 format. Audacity 3 .aup3 projects open, but conversion is one-way.
• Linux — the AppImage is now a universal build rather than Ubuntu-only.