Audacity 4.0.2 Restores Automatic Saving During Recording

Audacity 4.0.2 is out, the second maintenance update to the free, open-source audio editor's 4.0 series. Released on November 2, it is unapologetically a stability release: "While we work hard to add new features and bring back missing ones in the upcoming 4.1, this patch release fixes many crashes and project corruption issues," the team writes in the release notes.

Automatic saving during recording is back

The headline restoration is automatic saving during recording - protection against losing a take if something goes wrong mid-session, now back in the 4.0 line. The release also restores the trim, clear selection, and zoom shortcuts that went missing, and adds PgUp and PgDown timeline scrolling.

Crashes and project corruption fixed

Three project-corruption bugs are fixed: loading projects that contain empty clips, copying between projects, and duplicate .aup4 extensions with errors when replacing projects during Save As. The crash fixes cover opening projects with sample snapping enabled, selecting Repeat Last Effect after closing a project, and using Split when its shortcut is not set. Beyond that: a fix for incorrect pitch and clip loss when moving clips across tracks with different sample rates, missing metadata and incorrect title and artist fields in certain formats, NTSC frame snapping, point labels linking to adjacent labels during stretching, context menu access on collapsed clips, incorrect handling of CJK characters while trimming text, and File > Import returning no files on Linux. Playback latency from the input meter display and the status bar layout in narrow windows are also improved.

Getting it

Audacity 4.0.2 is a free download for Windows, macOS, and Linux (AppImage for 64-bit and AArch64) from the official site and the project's GitHub page. Given the nature of the fixes, updating is worth it for anyone on the 4.0 series.