# Transport Toolbar

### From Audacity Manual

- Transport Toolbar has buttons for controlling playback and recording and for moving to the project start or end.
- These buttons can also be controlled with keyboard shortcuts.

## Pause Transport > Pause or P

Temporarily pauses playing or recording without losing your place. Click Pause a second time to resume.

| You cannot edit a track (for example, run effects on it) while it is paused. Instead, use the shortcut SHIFT + A to stop and set the cursor at the stop point, then you can click the Play button to start playback from that stop position.

## Play Transport > Play

Standard-speed playback. If an area of track is selected, only that selection will be played. Otherwise, playback begins wherever the editing cursor is.

- To loop-play (play the track or selection over and over until you stop), hold down SHIFT while clicking Play. This causes the button image to change to loop-play . You can use the SHIFT + SPACE shortcut to start loop-play instead.
- To cut-play (play audio either side of a selection to preview what deleting the selection will sound like), hold down CTRL (or COMMAND on a Mac computer) while clicking Play. You can use the C shortcut to preview the cut instead.

## Stop Transport > Stop

Stops playing or recording immediately, and releases Pause if depressed. You must stop playback or recording before you can use the "Skip" buttons below and before you can edit any audio.

By default, SPACE on the keyboard functions as a shortcut to Play or Stop.

## Skip to Start Transport > Skip to Start or HOME

Move the cursor to the beginning of the project. This is useful if you want to play everything, or record a new track starting from the beginning.

## Skip to End Transport > Skip to End or END

Move the cursor to the end of the project.

Holding down SHIFT while clicking Skip to Start extends a selection region from the cursor position or current selection area to the start of the project. Holding down SHIFT with Skip to End similarly extends a selection region to the end of the project.

## Record Transport > Record or R

Clicking Record or using the R shortcut always begins recording in a new track at either the current cursor position or at the beginning of the current selection.

You can Append Record (start recording at the end of the currently selected track(s)) by holding down SHIFT while clicking Record (or use its shortcut SHIFT + R).

## Alternative button order

The default "ergonomic" order of buttons on the Transport Toolbar can be unchecked in Interface Preferences to give this alternative order:

Any users who had the CleanSpeech customized interface enabled in 1.3.13 or earlier 1.3 versions of Audacity will find that Transport Toolbar has an empty space which previously contained the CleanSpeech button. This space can be removed by choosing View > Toolbars > Reset Toolbars .

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