Audacity, the free audio editor that’s been a default recommendation for two decades’ worth of podcasters, musicians, and anyone needing to trim an MP3, shipped version 4 on September 3 — its largest interface and workflow update in years, built on a completely rewritten Qt-based interface rather than the older toolkit the app has used since its earliest releases.
What actually changed
The rewrite brings clip-level editing that’s been a persistent user request for years: clips can now be freely moved, selected in groups, trimmed and stretched with dedicated handles, and colored automatically for easier visual tracking. Gain envelopes — drawing volume changes directly onto a waveform rather than applying a flat effect — are new, alongside a split tool and direct sample editing, loop regions with markers, and per-track vertical playback meters. On the plugin side, Audacity 4 adds support for LV2, VST3, and AU formats, and the app remains backward-compatible with project files saved in Audacity 3’s .aup3 format. Users can choose between a “Modern” layout with a vertical master meter or a “Classic” layout closer to the app’s old look, switch between multiple customizable workspaces, and — notably — opt out of Muse Group’s broader “ecosystem” features entirely by downloading a standalone bundle instead.
The fork that came with it
Audacity’s 2021 acquisition by Muse Group was contentious from the start, with open-source advocates raising concerns about corporate control, in-app monetization, and the eventual direction of a project that had been community-maintained for two decades. The GPLv3 license means Audacity itself can never stop being free software, but those concerns were concrete enough that developers spun up Tenacity, a community-maintained fork with none of Muse Group’s proprietary “pack-in” features, distributed as a fully FLOSS application for Apple Silicon, Intel, and ARM, with native Mac binaries available through MacPorts. Version 4’s release doesn’t resolve that split — Tenacity continues on its own track — but it does mean both the official app and its community alternative are drawing from the same substantially modernized codebase going forward.