Selection Toolbar

Selection Toolbar includes controls for Project Rate, Snap-To and for manipulating units of time or other selection formats. Using the "Start" and "End/Length" boxes, you can precisely place the cursor point or selection region without using a mouse to click or drag in the waveform, and without zooming in first to find the exact spot.

If you change the Snap-To option or selection format, all subsequent project windows you open will respect that change.

Click on the image to learn more

Selection Toolbar (above) is normally at the bottom of the Audacity window, but like any of the Toolbars, it can be moved as desired by dragging the serrated edge on its left side.

Project Rate (Hz)

The sample rate for the project, by default this is set to 44100 Hz. To change the default rate that is used each time Audacity is launched (or each time a new, empty project window is opened), use Quality Preferences.

Changing the project rate in Selection Toolbar immediately changes the sample rate at which new tracks will be recorded or generated in the current project, and at which existing tracks will be played, rendered or exported. If the rate you require is not in the dropdown list, you may type the rate you want directly over the currently selected rate.

Audacity supports multiple tracks with different sample rates.

The "Project Rate" is the rate that the project is working in. If you have a project with two tracks, one with a sample rate of 8000 Hz and one with a sample rate of 48000 Hz, and the "Project Rate" is set to 44100 Hz, then:

playback will be 44100 Hz,
any new tracks created by "Tracks menu > Add track" will be 44100 Hz,
new track created by recording to a new track will be 44100 Hz,
when the audio is exported, it will be exported as a 44100 Hz file,
mixing down tracks will mix to 44100 Hz.

Snap-To

Snapping to whole seconds can be useful for exporting a selection that needs to be a whole number of seconds, without entering values in the Selection Toolbar boxes (which would be another way of ensuring accuracy).

Various types of file frame can be snapped to, including NTSC and PAL. Snapping to film frames can be useful to maintain video and audio synchronization when editing audio from video files.

Select Nearest from the Snap-To dropdown menu to force-snap the cursor or selection edges to the closest position of the current selection format.
- A mouse click will move the cursor unless the click is less than half way to the next nearest snap position.
- Any selection drag moves the selection once you drag the mouse pointer more than half way to the next snap position in the direction of drag.

Select Prior from the same menu to force-snap the cursor or selection edges to the immediately preceding position of the current selection format.
- If a mouse click moves the cursor, it will always move it backwards relative to the click point.
- A leftwards selection drag immediately moves the selection to the next snap position in the direction of drag. A rightwards drag does not move the selection until the mouse pointer goes beyond the next snap position.

The format can be various Selection Formats, samples, audio CD frames or film frames. The default format is hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds (seconds accurate to three decimal places, as in the above image).

Even if Snap-To is enabled, a track or clip can still be time-shifted to any position and the Tracks > Align Tracks command will still align to positions outside snap positions for the current format.

Nearest

With Snap-To set to "Nearest" and the format set to hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, clicking in-between 6.500 seconds and 6.501 seconds as displayed on the Timeline snaps the cursor to the nearest millisecond unit, unless the cursor is already exactly at the nearest millisecond unit relative to the click point.

Now suppose we want to snap the cursor to whole seconds. To do this, change the format to one where the smallest unit is seconds, for example, hours, minutes and seconds (hh:mm:ss).

Assuming the cursor is currently at other than exactly 2.0 whole seconds, clicking at 2.4 seconds will now snap the cursor to 2.0 seconds, while clicking at 2.8 seconds will snap the cursor to 3.0 seconds.
Dragging a selection always snaps both selection edges to the nearest whole second. For example, when dragging rightwards on the right edge of a selection from 2.3 seconds to 2.6 seconds, the left edge of the selection will jump back at once to 2.0 seconds and the right edge of the selection will jump forwards at once to 3.0 seconds.
If you continue to drag the mouse pointer, the right edge of the selection will not extend at once, but will snap to 4.0 seconds once the mouse pointer is dragged beyond 3.5 seconds. Similarly, if you then drag leftwards on the left edge of the selection it will extend to start from 1.0 seconds when the pointer is dragged before 1.5 seconds.

Prior

With Snap-To set to "Prior" and the format set to hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds, clicking anywhere in-between 6.500 seconds and 6.501 seconds always snaps the cursor to the immediately preceding unit, in this case 6.500 seconds.

Now let's set the format to one where the smallest unit is seconds, for example, hours, minutes and seconds.

Clicking at either 2.4 seconds or 2.8 seconds will both snap the cursor to 2.0 seconds
Dragging a short way on either edge of a selection from 2.3 seconds to 2.6 seconds will remove the selection and set the cursor at 2.0 seconds because the snap is to the previous whole second unit and there can not be a selection shorter than a whole second.
Dragging rightwards on the right edge of a selection from 2.0 seconds to 4.0 seconds will not extend the selection until the mouse pointer reaches exactly 5.0 seconds. Dragging rightwards on the left edge will not contract the selection until the pointer reaches exactly 3.0 seconds.
Dragging leftwards on the left edge of a selection from 2.0 seconds to 4.0 seconds extends the selection immediately to start from 1.0 seconds. Dragging leftwards on the right edge contracts the selection immediately to end at 3.0 seconds.

Keyboard use:

When either "Nearest" or "Prior" Snap-To is enabled you can always move the cursor to the preceding or following Snap-To position by using keyboard Left arrow or Right arrow respectively.
Similarly you can always expand a selection edge to the nearest Snap-To position by holding Shift and pressing Left arrow to move the left edge or Right arrow to move the right edge.
Contract a selection edge to the nearest Snap-To position by holding Ctrl and Shift then pressing Left arrow to contract from the right edge or Right arrow to contract from the left edge.

Audio Position

This shows the current audio position while playing or recording, or the current cursor position when not playing or recording.

Selection Position Boxes

There are four available settings in the Selection Position Boxes in Selection Toolbar for the manner in which the details of your selection are displayed:

Start and End of selection: the start time and the end time of your selection (default setting)
Start and Length of selection: the start time and the length of your selection
Length and End of selection: the length and the end time of your selection
Length and Center of selection: the length and the time at the center of your selection

Editing the Selection Toolbar digits

You can edit the individual digits representing time or other formats in the time boxes so as to change the cursor position or selection region on the waveform. Using a mouse, click on a digit in one of the boxes then use the mouse wheel or up and down arrow on the keyboard to increment the value, or type the required value. Use left and right arrow to navigate quickly to adjoining digits, and Tab or Shift + Tab to navigate to adjoining boxes.

Selection Toolbar is also fully accessible using only the keyboard. See Audacity Selection for how to use Selection Toolbar with the keyboard.

Selections made by modifying the Selection Toolbar time digits with either keyboard or mouse will always snap to the current selection format, even if the Snap-To checkbox is unchecked.

Note particularly that changing theLength of a selection by modifying the Selection Toolbar time digits may alter the start of the selection, if the start of the selection is not currently at an exact multiple of the selection format. That is, by editing the Length, the entire selection, including the start, will snap to the current selection format.

Selection Formats

To access the context menu listing the selection formats, click the triangle to right of any box. You can also select in or right-click over any digit in a box (or use a keyboard equivalent). The following table lists the 16 available formats.

Selection Format	Example	Notes
seconds	005,408 seconds
hh:mm:ss	01 h 30 m 08 s	Hours, minutes, seconds
dd:hh:mm:ss	00 days 01 h 30 m 08 s	Days, hours, minutes, seconds
hh:mm:ss + hundredths	01 h 30 m 08.51 s
hh:mm:ss + milliseconds	01 h 30 m 08.512 s	Default
hh:mm:ss + samples	01 h 30 m 08 s + 22500 samples
samples	238,514,850 samples
hh:mm:ss + film frames (24 fps)	01 h 30 m 08 s + 12 frames
film frames (24 fps)	129,804 frames
hh:mm:ss + NTSC drop frames	01 h 30 m 08 s + 14 frames	American video format
hh:mm:ss + NTSC non-drop frames	01 h 30 m 03 s + 02 frames
NTSC frames	162,092 frames
hh:mm:ss + PAL frames (25 fps)	01 h 30 m 08 s + 12 frames	European video format
PAL frames (25 fps)	135,212 frames
hh:mm:ss + CDDA frames (75 fps)	01 h 30 m 08 s + 37 frames
CDDA frames (75 fps)	405,637 frames	Audio CD frames

In the following example we changed the format to samples, which is the most finely detailed format available. All three time selection boxes changed their selection fornat units to the new format.

Changing the selection format does not change the units displayed on the Timeline. The Timeline is always displayed in hours, minutes, seconds and parts of seconds, varying according to the current zoom level.