Transport Toolbar

• The Transport Toolbar has buttons for controlling playback and recording.
• These buttons can also be controlled with keyboard shortcuts.

Pause  Transport > Pause or P

Temporarily pauses playing or recording without losing your place. Press Pause a second time to resume.

Play  Transport > Play

Standard-speed playback. If an area of track is selected, only that selection will be played. Otherwise, playback begins wherever the selection cursor is. To loop-play (play the track or selection over and over until you press Stop), hold down SHIFT while pressing Play. This causes the button image to change to loop-play: .

Stop  Transport > Stop

Stops playing or recording immediately, and releases Pause if depressed. You have to Stop before you can use the "Skip" buttons below and before you can edit any audio.

By default, SPACE on the keyboard functions as a shortcut to Play or Stop. To loop-play by means of a shortcut, use SHIFT + SPACE.

Skip to Start  Transport > Skip to Start or HOME

Move the cursor to the beginning of the project. This is useful if you want to play everything, or record a new track starting from the beginning.

Skip to End  Transport > Skip to End or END

Move the cursor to the end of the project.

Holding down SHIFT while clicking Skip to Start extends a selection region from the cursor position or current selection area to the start of the project. Holding down SHIFT with Skip to End similarly extends a selection region to the end of the project.

Record  Transport > Record or R

Recording begins at either the current cursor location or at the beginning of the current selection. Pressing Record always creates a new track, but you can append-record (start recording at the end of the currently selected track(s)) by holding down SHIFT while pressing Record.

Alternative button order

The default "ergonomic" order of buttons on the Transport Toolbar can be unchecked in Interface Preferences to give this alternative order:

Any users who had the CleanSpeech customized interface enabled in 1.3.13 or earlier 1.3 versions of Audacity will find that Transport Toolbar has an empty space which previously contained the CleanSpeech button. This space can be removed by choosing View > Toolbars > Reset Toolbars .