Simplifying Audacity

This page is primarily intended for teachers (and anyone working with others) who want to create an easier version of Audacity with fewer menu items.

These are advanced instructions that let you use freely available language tools to make a customized language file for Audacity that shows fewer menu items. The customized language file can be in English or any other supported language.

<!-- Currently we do not provide a ready-made "simplified" language file in English or any other languages. If you are prepared to work with freely available language tools you can still create a simplified language file yourself using the advanced steps.

The Problem
Audacity has many features, but this can make it intimidating for new users. We've had many requests for a simplified version of Audacity that is easier to use. One problem is that different people have different ideas of what is "simple".

A second problem is that many settings are most useful when getting Audacity set up - settings for recording and playback, to get the MP3 library installed, settings for latency, quality and directories. These settings need to be available during setting Audacity up. They are probably best hidden from users who want to use an already set up version of Audacity.

The Solution
Audacity already contains a flexible system for changing the text in Audacity. This is used for translating Audacity into different languages. When you select a different language in the Interface Preferences Audacity will use text from the file you specify in place of the text that it has built in. The language files end with the suffix ".mo".


 * We have added a small addition to this feature. If the translation of an item in a menu starts with an "!", Audacity will leave that menu item out when using that language.  This allows us to radically cut down the menu.

We've created a "simplified" language file which reduces the menus in a way which we think is helpful.

Currently we only have a simplified language file for English. We may release simplified language files in other languages, if there is demand for them.

We'll explain where to get this language file from here

We suggest:


 * You set up Audacity normally and confirm that recording, playback and MP3 exporting work fine. The default sample rate is 44100 Hz.  You may want to set a lower rate if audio quality is not that important.
 * You can hide the Mixer Toolbar now, using the View Menu.
 * Select the Multi-Tool as the tool mode to be used.
 * You can now hide the Tools Toolbar.
 * If you want to hide the Transcription Toolbar and the Selection Toolbar you can do so too.
 * Now go into the Interface Preferences.
 * If you don't want the solo buttons, set the "Solo button" mode to "None".
 * Then in the "Language" choice just above, select "Simplified" as the language.
 * When you exit the Preferences dialog, you should find that menus have been reduced and now contain fewer items.

If you look in the View Menu you will see that there is a new item called "Simplified View" and that it has a check mark beside it.

Many of the items in the menus will now have gone. One of these is the "Preferences" menu item, and its shortcut (by default or {{key|CMND + ,) will no longer work. If you need to access Preferences you can enable the full mode of Audacity again by unchecking "Simplified View" in View Menu. This restores the full menus, letting you make your changes. Click "Simplified View" again to remove access to Preferences.

In simplified mode the option to show or hide toolbars is removed from the menus, which is why we suggest you choose which toolbars to show before enabling the Simplified interface.

If you use this feature but find it is not helpful, you can either hide it or remove it completely. To hide it, switch back to your usual language in the Preferences. To remove it completely, remove the special language folder called "en-simple" from your Audacity installation folder.

When you switch back from Simplified to English in the Preferences, "Simplified View" is still visible in the View Menu (unchecked) but clicking it removes it (without of course enabling the simplified view). Can it be removed automatically when switching away from Simplified in the Preferences? - Gale Oops. That's a bug and I'll look into it. It should be that the language changes take immediate effect (when you exit preferences). I must have overlooked something.

Advanced
This is for people who have already got the existing "Simplified" language file and the steps above working, and now want to go further.


 * If you want to customize what menu items are made available and what items are not, it is quite a lot more complex. If you ask on the Audacity Forum, there may be someone willing to create a custom "simplified" language file for you.


 * If you want to create a new simplified language file yourself, it's best to get in touch with the Audacity developer list (audacity-devel _AT_ lists_DOT_sourceforge_DOT_net) or click [mailto:audacity-devel@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=Customizing_the_simplified_language_file here]. This is a new feature, and customizing it is not yet as easy as we would like it to be.  People who have used the tools for translating Audacity will be familiar with the steps as described at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/community/translation. Here are steps using the cross-platform Poedit language file editor, but the principles are the same if you use some other tool. -->

Instructions
Eventually we hope to provide a customized language file with reduced menus ourself. Meantime, you can follow the below instructions to create your own file. If you need help following these instructions, please ask on the Audacity Forum.


 * 1) Get hold of Poedit.
 * 2) Get hold of the translations file for your language and version of Audacity.
 * 3) * For English language, download http://audacity.sourceforge.net/locale/audacity.pot.
 * 4) * For languages other than English, download the appropriate Audacity .po file from Google Code. You can check the two digit code that corresponds to your language here.
 * 5) Load the .po or .pot file into Poedit.
 * 6) Add a "!" (exclamation mark) to left of the translation of each menu item you want to hide. The .pot file will not have translations, so it's possible to just add a "!" in the empty translation box. View > Simplified View: You can provide a View > Simplified View checkbox menu item to turn your simplified language on or off. To do this, ADD "Simplified View" (without the "!") in the empty translation box in the .pot file, or REMOVE the "!" from the translation of "!Simplified View" in the .po file.If you provide View > Simplified View and use the .pot file you should translate the items you want to remove and place "!" in front of them. Otherwise when you uncheck Simplified View there will be empty menu items.
 * 7) Click File > Save as... to save the file as "Audacity.mo".  Poedit may warn you that some strings are not translated, but that is not a problem.  You can still use the .mo file.
 * 8) Open your Audacity installation folder then open the "Languages" folder inside that.
 * 9) * For English language, create a folder called "en-simple" inside the "Languages" folder and paste your saved "Audacity.mo" inside that.
 * 10) * For languages other than English, open the folder for your language (for example, "fr" for French) and paste in the "Audacity.mo" file you saved so that it replaces the previous "Audacity.mo".
 * 11) Restart Audacity and select your modified non-English language in Interface Preferences (if it is not already displaying). To display the simplified English language, choose "Simplified".