Navigating Effects

Accessing Effects with Shortcuts
  In current Audacity, shortcuts can be added in Keyboard Preferences to items in the Generate, Effect or Analyze menus, including plug-ins that you added yourself. The shortcut activates the effect if the effect has no dialog, or opens the effect dialog.

 "Repeat Last Effect" ( or on Mac) can be used in any version of Audacity to repeat the last used effect at its last used settings. If you grab a noise profile with Noise Removal then use "Repeat Last Effect", noise will be removed at the current settings rather than grabbing a new noise profile.

 In legacy Audacity 2.0.0 or earlier, external macro programs can be used to allocate shortcuts to particular effects. Windows:   AutoHotKey (open source)  PowerPro (freeware)  Robotask (paid for)  OS X:   QuickKeys (paid for)  Keyboard Maestro (paid for)  Automator (built into recent OS X) or  AppleScipt (requires detailed UI knowledge, try UIBrowser Assistant to overcome this). </ul>

Working examples in AutoHotKey: (contributed by Rabbi-m):

Windows key + u = Fade In:
 * u::Send !{c}f{Enter}

Windows key + y = Fade Out:
 * y::Send !{c}ff{Enter}</ul>

Other keyboard methods

 * Pressing then  (on Linux you may have to hold down the ALT) opens the Effect menu and takes you to the top of the list without having to use a mouse.


 * You can scroll up and down the menu one item at a time with the up and down arrow keys. If you are already at the top of the menu, the up arrow will skip to the bottom item of the menu.


 * On Linux only, effects underneath the divider are grouped as "Plugins 1 - 15", "Plugins 16 - 30" and so on; use right arrow to move into the list of plug-ins in the group.


 * Press on the keyboard to open the highlighted effect.


 * Once in the Effect, you can use to navigate forwards through the text boxes, sliders and buttons. Hold  while pressing  to skip backwards. You can use the arrow keys,, .  or  to control a slider. Note: On Linux you must click in a box or slider before you can navigate with the keyboard. On Mac, Home and End do not work with sliders.


 * Once you have used an effect, you can use "Repeat Last Effect" at the top of the menu to repeat that effect with those last used parameters. This also has a shortcut (or  on a Mac). You can change this shortcut to something else on the  of.

Faster navigation

 * On Windows, at any stage when the menu is open you can navigate to the next effect starting with a particular letter by typing that letter. For example, from the top of the menu:
 * press H then H to reach "High Pass Filter" (underneath the divider, because the effect is in Audacity's Plug-Ins folder)
 * press C then C to reach "Change Speed".


 * On Linux, seeking effects by letter does not work but you can use or  instead (which do not work on Windows) to skip items, followed by up or down arrow.