Help

The Help menu links out to learning resources, checks for new versions, connects your audio.com account, and holds recovery commands for when the application’s configuration needs a clean start.

Check for updates

Checks whether a newer version of Audacity is available for download.

This item only appears in builds that support in-app updates. If your copy of Audacity came from a package manager or another channel that handles its own updates, the menu starts at Tutorials instead.

Tutorials

Opens Audacity’s tutorial material in your web browser. This is an external resource — it takes you out of the application and needs an internet connection.

For reference documentation rather than tutorials, use Online handbook instead.

Online handbook

Opens the Audacity manual — the documentation you are reading now — in your default web browser. This is an external resource, so it needs an internet connection.

Diagnostics

Not yet enabled in the current Audacity 4 alpha.

A submenu of troubleshooting and developer commands. Its everyday purpose is Save diagnostic files, which gathers information about your setup into files you can attach to a bug report. A System submenu shows the paths Audacity is using and a performance profiler.

With developer mode enabled, further submenus appear for inspecting the accessibility and navigation trees and other development tooling. These are aimed at people working on Audacity itself rather than at everyday use.

Link account

Connects Audacity to your audio.com account. Linking an account is what lets Audacity work with audio.com’s sharing features; without one, everything else in the application works as normal — an account is never required for recording or editing.

In the current Audacity 4 alpha the menu item is present but the linking flow itself has not yet been implemented.

About Audacity

Opens the About dialog, which identifies exactly which Audacity you are running. It has two tabs: Audacity, with the version number, credits and a link to the Audacity website, and Legal, with copyright and trademark information.

The version number shown here is the first thing to include in a bug report. A neighbouring About Qt item shows the same kind of information for the Qt toolkit Audacity is built on.

Revert to factory settings

Resets Audacity to the state of a fresh install. It resets all your app preferences and custom UI configurations, deletes your custom workspaces and shortcuts, and means third-party plugins will need to be scanned again. It does not delete any of your projects.

A confirmation dialog spells out what will be removed before anything happens — cancelling it leaves everything untouched. After the reset, Audacity offers to restart, which is needed for the changes to take effect. Treat this as the last resort — the Tools menu’s Reset configuration is the narrower settings-only reset.

Last updated 3 September 2026