What changed in Audacity from 3 to 4

Audacity 4.0.1 release notes

Many of these fixes come from community contributors. Thank you all!

Features

• Export multiple: export each track, or each labelled region, to its own file (#11136)
• Portable Windows version that runs without installation (#11932)
• Restored missing Audacity 3 keyboard shortcuts (#12062)
• "Open in file manager" on the Cloud projects tab (#11801)
• Clickable carousel dots on the Welcome screen (#11247, by @danielmolinas)
• Liquid Glass app icon on macOS (#11923, by @JoshBashed)

Accessibility

• The timeline and the track vertical rulers are now part of keyboard navigation (#11367, #11368)
• Opening the Effects panel focuses the "Add effect" button (#11416)
• Toast notifications are announced by screen readers and reachable by keyboard (#11645)

Bug fixes

• Fixed project corruption after a failed save (#12296)
• Fixed clips being messed up when converting .aup3 projects (#12209)
• Fixed opening projects and files with non-ASCII characters in their name or folder (#11973, #11976, #12004, #12057, by @jonata)
• Fixed other non-ASCII text issues: presets with Unicode names, starting a new project, and the input device always being the system default on Windows (#8267, #11468, #12107)
• Fixed Audacity failing to launch with Windows Smart App Control enabled (#12167)
• Fixed the AppImage failing to install or start on some Linux distributions (#10135, #12093, by @kfl; #11915)
• Fixed crash when opening the Effect menu in German (#12025)
• Fixed "Audacity quit unexpectedly" dialogs popping up during plugin validation (#11427)
• Fixed VST3 setting changes being reverted on playback start (#11892)
• Fixed typing values into effect controls (#11643, #11668)
• Dragging clips and labels across tracks is faster and no longer crashes, and dragging a duplicated clip onto its original no longer makes it disappear (#12097, #12081 by @jonata)
• Realtime effect windows stay open on edits and undo/redo, and undo/redo is faster with many effects (#12187)
• Fixed clips flickering when selecting after applying an effect (#11145)
• Fixed the playhead drifting from bars and beats above 120 BPM (#11925)
• The view no longer jumps on pause or double-click, and selecting a track by its header no longer moves the playhead (#11148, #12013, #11972 by @jonata)
• Fixed new labels being placed at the wrong position, and the first label's name not being editable right away (#11682 by @RiccardoCampo, #10083)
• No more "-9996 Invalid device" error dialog when input monitoring can't open the device (#12070, by @jonata)
• Fixed exported file names being truncated (#11966)
• Fixed opening files dropped on the macOS Dock icon (#11961)
• Fixed upper-case extensions such as .WAV not being recognized on Linux (#12007)
• Fixed shortcuts not being saved (#11903)
• Fixed tooltips on the gain, volume and graphic EQ sliders (#10410, #11841)
• Fixed the meter dB range not being translated (#11940 by @jonata)
• Cloud: fixed resuming uploads after a lost connection, mono audio imported as stereo, and broken project audio previews (#11609, #12155, #11568)
• Cloud: no more redundant sync dialog on save, error when overwriting a local copy, or half-initialized window after a failed open (#11373, #11460, #11374)

Audacity 4.0

Audacity 4 rebuilds the application interface on Qt and introduces many new quality-of-life improvements, including a new clip-editing model. Most Audacity 3 workflows remain available, but some controls have moved or changed.

Watch the video:

Editing clips

• Clips can be selected directly. Click a clip header to select it, or Shift-click to select multiple clips.
• Several clips can be edited together. Moving, trimming and time stretching apply to all selected clips.
• Clips can be grouped. Groups remain together when moved, copied, pasted or duplicated.
• Clips can be placed more freely. They can move between mono and stereo tracks. Moving a clip over another replaces the overlapped part instead of blocking the move.
• Splitting has a dedicated tool. Press or hold S, then click the waveform or clip header. Split, split-cut, split-delete, split at silences and split to a new track are also available as commands.
• Paste handles more cases automatically. Audacity can create a track when needed, adapt compatible channel layouts and paste audio files from the operating-system clipboard.
• Alignment guides, sample-boundary snapping and per-project snap settings have been added or expanded.

Interface and tools

• The interface has been rebuilt on Qt, with native high-DPI rendering.
• Toolbars and panels can be moved, docked, floated, shown or hidden.
• UI layouts can be saved as Workspaces. Audacity includes Modern, Classic and Music workspaces.
• Light, dark and high-contrast themes are available, along with accent colors, track colors and several clip styles.
• The new Home screen shows recent projects with preview thumbnails.

The separate Select, Envelope, Draw and Multi-tool modes have been removed. Their functions are now context-sensitive:

• Volume envelopes are displayed in the Clip gain mode.
• Sample drawing becomes available when the waveform is zoomed to individual samples.
• Splitting is available by holding S.
• Track and effect parameters use consistent rotary controls with fine adjustment and double-click reset.
• Sync-Lock has been removed. Delete, cut and paste now have explicit variants for either leaving a gap or moving later material to preserve timing.

Playback and recording

• The playhead remains visible during navigation and can be dragged to a new position.
• Playback can seek to another position without stopping.
• Recording can start anywhere on the timeline and creates a clip at that position.
• Loop boundaries and the interaction between playback, selections and loops have been revised.
• Punch and Roll, lead-in recording, latency compensation, software playthrough and per-track input monitoring have been rebuilt for the new interface.
• Audio Setup now includes system-default devices, refreshable device lists and custom channel mapping. Audacity can follow operating-system device changes automatically.
• Official Windows builds include ASIO playback and recording support.

Tracks, meters and effects

• Track headers now contain live playback and recording meters.
• Preset handling is consistent across built-in, destructive and realtime effects.
• Built-in effects, generators and analyzers have been rebuilt for the Qt interface.
• Supported plugin formats are VST3, Nyquist, LV2 on Linux and Audio Units on macOS. Audacity can display generated controls when a plugin's own interface is unavailable.
• Spectrogram has been redesigned with clearer guides and rulers, and faster rendering.

Projects, import and export

• Audacity 4 uses the new .aup4 project format.
• .aup3 projects open and convert to .aup4 without changing the original file. Converted projects cannot be saved back to .aup3.
• Older .aup projects can be imported.
• Project files store preview thumbnails and Audacity 4's additional clip and appearance data.

And last but not least, we had the audacity to change the Audacity logo.

Compatibility notes

The following Audacity 3 features are not available in Audacity 4.0, but we're working on adding them in future releases.

• Time Tracks
• Note/MIDI tracks
• Mixer
• Macro Manager and the scripting pipe
• VAMP and LADSPA plugin hosting
• Play-at-speed

Sync-Lock and the old tool modes were replaced by the workflows described above.

Additionally, Audacity 4 ships with some missing exporting and rendering features, analyzers, and effects.

Update: audacity-sources-4.0.0.tar.xz was updated to include SoundTouch and sbsms 3rd-party libraries.