Audacity 4.0 replaces tool modes with audio clips

Click a clip header, then Shift-click the next one: In Audacity 4.0, contiguous sections of an audio track can be moved, trimmed, or edited together through time-stretching and compression. The previous tool modes have disappeared for this purpose; the interface now responds to the current context.

The new clip model combines several editing steps. Groups can be moved, copied, or duplicated as a unit. Clips can be moved between mono and stereo tracks. If a clip is moved over material that is already occupied, it replaces the overlapped section instead of blocking the action. To split a clip, simply click the waveform or clip header while holding the S key; additional commands split at silent sections or move the section to a new track.

The interface now runs on Qt. Toolbars and panels can be moved, docked, freely positioned, and shown or hidden; custom layouts can be saved as workspaces. The Modern, Classic, and Music workspaces are already available for this purpose. Playback and recording have also been reworked: the playhead remains visible while navigating, and recordings can begin at any point on the timeline as a clip.

The redesign introduces a new project format: .aup4 also stores thumbnails and data for clip and interface display. Audacity continues to open projects in the .aup3 format and converts them when necessary, while leaving the original unchanged. They cannot subsequently be saved back as .aup3. At launch, time tracks, MIDI note tracks, the mixer, the Macro Manager and Scripting Pipe, variable playback speed, and support for VAMP and LADSPA plugins are also missing. According to the project, there are gaps in export, rendering, analysis tools, and effects as well.

In particular, workflows that involve moving or editing several audio sections together benefit most: selection takes place directly on the clip instead of through separate tool modes. However, anyone exchanging projects between Audacity 3 and 4 or continuing to edit them in the older version should keep a copy in the old format before converting. Audacity 4.0 is therefore a far-reaching redesign with a new clip model, but it does not yet offer the full feature set of the 3.x series.