Transport Menu: Playing

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These commands control playback in Audacity. You can Start, Stop or Pause playback of the audio in your project.
Transport Menu commands let you play or stop, loop play, scrub play or record (including timed and sound activated recordings)Tracks Menu provides commands for creating and removing tracks, applying operations to selected tracks such as mixing, resampling or converting from stereo to mono, and lets you add or edit labelsGenerate Menu lets you create audio containing tones, noise or silenceAudacity includes many built-in effects and also lets you use a wide range of plug-in effectsThe Analyze Menu contains tools for finding out about the characteristics of your audio, or labeling key featureThe Tools Menu contains customisable toolsThe Extra menu provides access to additional Commands that are not available in the normal default Audacity menusThe Help Menu lets you find out more about the Audacity application and how to use it. It also includes some diagnostic tools.These commands control playback in AudacityThese commands control recording in AudacityScrubbing is the action of moving the mouse pointer right or left so as to adjust the position, speed or direction of playback, listening to the audio at the same time - a convenient way to quickly navigate the waveform to find a particular event of interestThese commands let you move the cursor to the start or end of the selection, track or any adjacent Clip that you may haveThese commands enable you to lock a play region and unlock itRescan for audio devices connected to your computer, and update the playback and recording dropdown menus in Device ToolbarThis submenu lets you manage and set various options for transport (playing and recording) in AudacityStarts and stops playback or stops a recording (stopping does not change the restart position)Starts playback like "Play/Stop", but stopping playback sets the restart position to the stop pointPlays the selection over and over againTemporarily pauses playing or recording without losing your placeThe MenusTransport-PlayingMenu.png
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Bulb icon See the Playback page in the Manuals for more details on the Play commands.

Play/Stop  Space

Starts and stops playback. If a region of a track is selected, this command will play only that selection then playback will stop. Otherwise, playback begins wherever the editing cursor is and continues until the end of the project is reached. Starting playback with this command is the same as clicking the Play button Play button in Transport Toolbar.

When there is already playback or recording (or playback or recording is paused), this command stops playback or recording immediately without changing the selection region or the position of the editing cursor. Therefore using any play or record command after stopping with "Play/Stop" will start playback or recording from the same Timeline position it last started from. Stopping playback with this command is the same as clicking the Stop button Stop button in Transport Toolbar.

If you want to set separate keyboard shortcuts for Play and Stop you can do this in Keyboard Preferences.

Play/Stop and Set Cursor  X

Starts playback exactly like "Play/Stop", but stopping playback (or recording) sets the editing cursor, or the left edge of the selection region, to the stop point so that playback can be resumed from there.

Loop Play  Shift + Space

Play the entire selection repeatedly (or the entire track, starting at the current cursor position, if no selection) until stopped.

Same as holding the Shift key while clicking the Play button Play button in Transport Toolbar.

Pause  P

Temporarily pauses playing or recording without losing your place. Same as clicking the Pause button Pause button in Transport Toolbar.




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