If you can get past the terrible logo, Audacity 4 looks pretty great

The caller Audacity logo

Rebrands rarely get much love. That backlash tin beryllium particularly beardown if you’re giving a facelift to a decades-old portion of bundle beloved by nerds astir the globe. So, it was nary astonishment that erstwhile Audacity revealed its caller logo radical connected the net got a small worked up. And look, there’s nary 2 ways astir it, the logo is beauteous bad. The font it rather nice, but the bewildering instrumentality connected its accepted headphone icon is rough.

Reactions astir The Verge newsroom included “looks similar idiosyncratic stepped connected the pome euphony icon,” and “trying to determine if their caller logo looks similar a sperm, and americium mostly coming up with yes.” But if you tin get past the branding, Audacity 4 really looks similar it’s going to beryllium a overmuch needed upgrade.

Martin Keary, VP of merchandise astatine Muse, posted a astir hour agelong video to YouTube detailing the challenges facing Audacity, the logic down the plan changes, and updates connected the improvement of mentation 4 (slated for merchandise successful aboriginal 2026). One of the biggest improvements is successful minimizing what Keary calls “Audacity says ‘no’”. These are things that Audacity simply won’t fto you do, often with nary mentation different than a elemental popular up (if you’re lucky). He lists disconnected a fig of examples:

If you privation to resistance a clip past different clip, it hits it similar a ceramic wall. No. If you transcript a clip and effort to paste it wherever there’s not capable blank runway, no. You don’t person capable room. If you wanted to prime aggregate clips… no.

Cleaning this up progressive changing the behaviour of the UI, similar automatically trimming a clip if you paste thing implicit it, and getting escaped of a clump of “modes” that constricted however you could interact with audio. The squad besides added meters for idiosyncratic tracks, made trimming and clip stretching easier to find (just click and resistance the borderline of the clip), and added a divided instrumentality that makes cleaning up audio a spot easier.

Some users mightiness beryllium upset that the Sync Lock diagnostic is going distant but, arsenic a agelong clip idiosyncratic of Audacity, I tin corroborate it’s a confusing mess. Working with and keeping aggregate audio tracks successful sync is simply a hard situation to tackle, but the approached laid retired successful mentation 4 makes a batch much consciousness (to maine astatine least). Add to this a much customizable, modern interface that’s overmuch easier to work and Audacity 4 looks similar it’s really shaping up to beryllium large measurement guardant for the stalwart audio editor. Lets conscionable anticipation they revisit the branding earlier the due merchandise successful 2026.