Status Bar

Status Bar sections
There are three sections in the Status bar:
 * the current status, Playing, Recording and Stopped
 * the central information and hints section
 * the Actual Rate of the audio, the active sample rate.

Audacity version
Each time you launch Audacity the Status Bar will show the version of Audacity that you are running:
 * [[Image:Status Bar Welcome Mat.png|link=]]

You can always check what the currently available version of Audacity is at http://web.audacityteam.org/download/.

Mixer Toolbar
When you hover over the sliders in Mixer Toolbar the Playback and Recording volumes are displayed in the center section of the Status Bar.
 * [[Image:Status Bar Recording Volume.png|link=]]

Actual Rate
When you start playing or recording the Actual Rate in the right-hand section of the Status Bar updates to display the active sample rate. "Actual Rate" when playing should be the rate communicated by Audacity to the soundcard. "Actual Rate" when recording is the rate communicated by the soundcard to Audacity.


 * [[Image:Status Bar Actual Rate.png|link=]]

Recording length
When recording, the audio data is written to your hard disk. For example, if you record without having yet saved a Project, the data is written to Audacity's temporary folder specified in Directories Preferences. Therefore, the amount of time you can record for is limited by the available disk space on the drive you are writing to. There are no other restrictions on recording length. As soon as you start your first recording in the current project window, the center section of the Status Bar gives a clear indication of how long you can record for, based on that remaining space:
 * [[Image:Status Bar Disc space remaining.png|link=]]

The "Disk space remains" message will continue to display thereafter as soon as you leave the mouse stationary for a couple of seconds. If you run out of disk space at any time after starting or completing a recording, the default Status Bar message will change to "Out of disk space".

Reading files directly using On-Demand Loading
When reading imported uncompressed files files directly from the original files, the percentage of the waveform that has been computed is displayed in the center section of the Status Bar. When multiple files are being imported, the Status Bar will display the overall percentage of the multiple tracks that has been computed. To make the Status Bar display the percentage completion of a particular track, move the mouse over that track.
 * [[Image:Status Bar ODL.png|link=]]

Other Status Bar displays
When you hover over any track in the window the center section of Status Bar displays "Click and drag to select audio". Dragging horizontally always selects a region of time, but when in a Spectrogram view you can also drag vertically to make a frequency selection within the time range. When you release the drag or otherwise hover over the left or right edge of a selection, the Status Bar message changes to advise that you can click and drag to move that selection boundary. Hovering over the edges or center line of a frequency selection also displays help messages.

Many other buttons and tools in the Audacity window will display the name of the button or tool in the center section of Status Bar when you hover over the button or tool. Buttons in Transport Toolbar that display a Status Bar message include in parentheses the current keyboard shortcut for that button.

Grab Handle
The small hatched triangular area at bottom right of the Status Bar indicates where you can drag with the mouse to resize the Audacity window up, down, left or right on any operating system.