Audacity 4.0 Released: Huge Redesign & New Clip Editing

The biggest update in the audio editor’s 25-year history brings a modernized Qt interface, revolutionary clip editing, and advanced project management—without costing a dime.

Audacity 4.0

The wait is officially over: Audacity 4.0 has arrived, bringing the most extensive visual and functional overhaul in the history of the beloved free audio editor. Whether you are a podcaster juggling interviews, a musician tracking a demo, or a sound designer, this massive update modernizes how you record, edit, and organize audio.

Muse Group rebuilt the software from the ground up using the Qt framework, enabling native high-DPI rendering, a highly requested clip-editing model, and a flexible new interface, "Workspaces".

Julia Sazhina, Chief Product Officer at Muse Group, summed up the vision behind the launch: Audacity has been helping creators record and edit audio for over 25 years, and version 4 is meant to set it up for the next 25—without losing what people already love about it.

This follows the news earlier this week of the free TONE3000 Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) Plugin, so it's a great time for open-source software!

A Revolutionary New Way to Edit Clips

Clip editing has received a serious upgrade. Gone are the rigid movement restrictions of older versions. In Audacity 4.0, clips can seamlessly overlap, replacing the audio underneath instead of blocking your move entirely.

Users can now easily select, trim, and time-stretch multiple clips at once just by clicking their headers. If you are working on complex multi-track projects, you can finally group related clips together so they move and copy as a single locked object. Everything runs entirely non-destructively; if you trim too much audio, just pull the edge of the clip back out to recover it.

Split Tool

The community's most-requested feature has also landed: a Dedicated Split Tool. By simply holding the "S" key, you can divide recordings at the playhead across one or several tracks instantly. Additionally, clip envelopes bring volume automation directly into the clips themselves, letting you build fades without permanently altering the original recording.

Workspaces and Project Management

Audacity 4.0 introduces a brand-new Home Screen. Instead of scrolling through plain-text filenames, you can now browse visual thumbnails of your local files and cloud projects stored on audio.com, all in one centralized hub. Down the line, this home screen will double as a hub for built-in tutorials and learning resources.

Customization takes center stage with the new Workspaces feature. Switching between podcast editing, music production, and audio restoration no longer means manually reconfiguring toolbars. You can build, save, and instantly switch between custom interface layouts optimized for your exact workflow.

Under the hood, the update also moves to the new .aup4 project format, which stores your workspace and visual data. (Don't worry—older .aup3 files open and convert automatically).

Enhanced Recording and Plugin Capabilities

Navigating projects feels incredibly fluid now. The playhead remains visible at all times and can be dragged dynamically, letting you seek new points in the track without stopping playback. You can also start recording from anywhere on the timeline without rearranging your existing audio.

For Windows users, there is a massive under-the-hood bonus: official Audacity 4.0 builds now include native ASIO support out of the box for low-latency playback and recording.

The built-in effects have received fresh new interfaces. Real-time effects are fully supported alongside broad compatibility for VST3, Audio Unit (macOS), LV2 (Linux), and Nyquist plugins. As a brilliant fallback, if a third-party plugin lacks a graphical interface, Audacity will now automatically generate controls for it.

Complete List of New Features in Audacity 4.0

Here is a comprehensive breakdown of everything new in this landmark update:

• Rebuilt Qt Interface: A completely modernized UI featuring native high-DPI rendering for crisp displays.
• Customizable Workspaces: Dock, float, hide, save, and switch between UI layouts. (Includes Modern, Classic, and Music defaults).
• Complete Visual Glow-Up: Choose between Light, Dark, and High-Contrast themes, alongside customizable track and clip colors.
• Advanced Multi-Clip Editing: Shift-click clip headers to select, move, trim, and time-stretch several clips simultaneously.
• Clip Grouping: Lock related clips together so they can be moved, copied, or duplicated as a single object.
• Fluid Clip Placement: Overlapping clips now replace underlying audio instead of blocking moves. Clips can also easily transition between mono and stereo tracks.
• Dedicated Split Tool: Hold the "S" key and click to instantly cut audio (includes advanced split-cut and split-at-silence commands).
• Clip Envelopes: Adjust volume and build fades directly inside the clip non-destructively.
• New Home Screen: Browse recent local and audio.com cloud projects using visual preview thumbnails.
• Next-Gen.AUP4 Format: A more robust project file format that effortlessly converts older formats.
• Seamless Navigation: The playhead is always visible and freely draggable. Seek new timeline positions without stopping playback.
• Flexible Recording: Start recording anywhere on the timeline instantly, which automatically generates a new clip at that position.
• Context-Aware Smart Pasting: Audacity can automatically create new tracks or adapt to channel layouts when pasting audio from your operating system's clipboard.
• Windows ASIO Support: Official Windows builds now include ASIO playback and recording out of the box.
• Upgraded Plugin Support: Full support for VST3, Audio Units, LV2, and Nyquist. Audacity now auto-generates UI controls for plugins missing their own.
• Improved Snapping: Enhanced alignment guides, sample-boundary snapping, and per-project snap settings.

Still Free, Still Open Source

Despite the massive modernizations, Audacity 4.0 doesn’t change what the software fundamentally is.

It remains 100% free and open-source, with development continuing to be driven by a core team and backed by the wider community's code contributions, translations, and feedback.

Audacity 4.0 is now available for download on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

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