Help Menu

From Audacity Manual

The Help Menu lets you find out more about the Audacity program and how to use it. It also includes some more advanced tools such as for taking Audacity screenshots, or viewing log messages generated by the program.

About Audacity...

Displays the "About Audacity" dialog, containing tabs for:

Audacity version information, credits and list of libraries used in Audacity
Build information for the current build, including file format support and enabled libraries and features
GPL v2 License

Note: on Macs this item is under the Audacity menu.

Quick Help (in web browser)

The "Getting Started" section of our Manual - quick information on how to play, record and edit audio, and export to an audio file like MP3 or WAV.

Manual (in web browser)

Takes you to the main sections of our Manual:

Tutorials
Using Audacity - fundamental concepts of working with digital audio
Reference - all the menus, buttons and controls
Miscellaneous - including Glossary and Frequently Asked Questions

Show Log ...

Launches the "Debug Log" window. This is largely a debugging aid. It should normally be empty, except that if you use the optional FFmpeg library, it will show entries for the steps to load the individual FFmpeg components. Occasionally, an Alpha or Beta build of Audacity might have extra log entries if a specific problem was under investigation.

Screenshot Tools...

Displays the "Screen Capture Frame". This tool assists you in capturing all or part of your project window to an image file. Click the "Choose..." button to pick the location where you want to save the screenshot. Then click the button corresponding to the part of the project window you want to capture. Most of these buttons are self-explanatory.

For "Capture entire window or screen":

"Capture Window Only" captures the window without its title bar.
"Capture Full Window" captures the window including its title bar.
"Capture Window Plus" captures the window including its title bar, plus a small border region outside the window for context.
"Capture Full Screen" captures the entire computer screen as you see it.

For "Scale":

The "Sec", "Min" and "One Hour" buttons zoom the project window horizontally so that a little more than the length indicated on the button is shown on the Timeline.
The "Tracks" buttons zoom all the tracks in the project to a preset height. For example, "Short Tracks" displays the tracks at minimal height so they only show the Track Drop-Down Menu and Collapse/Expand button.

Screenshot Tools can be handy for capturing waveforms (use the "Track Panel" button), or frequency plots (use any of the three "Capture Window" buttons to capture the Frequency Analysis window without the main project window).
Some individual parts of the interface cannot be captured, such as menus, and dialogs that do not allow you to click anywhere else while the dialog is open.

Run Benchmark...

Performs a mock editing routine to test how fast Audacity runs on your machine, expressed in terms of the estimated number of simultaneous tracks that could be played at once in a 44100 Hz, 16 bits per sample project.

Audio Device Info...

Shows technical information about your detected audio device(s), including their supported sample rates.