Revision as of 10:02, 6 July 2016

Dark Audacity is a customised 'auteur' version of Audacity. It has a dark theme, orange on black, and modern icons from Google's 'Material Design' icon set.

There are many UI changes to make use easier.

 Website: www.darakaudacity.com

DarkAudacity is an Audacity side project by James Crook

Status and Screenshot

July 2016: Under development.

Changes ot get the new features developed outside Audacity's QA approval process. Currently planned for end of August 2016, and only for Windows.

Work in progress on DarkAudacity variant of Audacity 2.1.3.

UI Changes

• Recording is now by default Record-Beside rather than Record-Below. Multiple takes are in sequence rather than all mixed together.
• Pause does not lock the user interface. Editing actions will 'pop' pause up.
• Streamlined menus. Most menus are shorter and more logically organised. The 'price' is that the menus are deeper to fit the same functions on.
• Clutter reduction. Textual information that adds little has been removed. The information is still available if wanted.
• Time-Lock that locks tracks together no longer an edit-bar button. It was confusing there and is now reached from the tracks.
• Play and record indicator have distinct 'pinned' (square-pin) and 'unpinned' (triangular marker) versions. This makes the role of the pin-button clearer.

Inspiration

A history of designs that has inspired the DarkAudacity variant is available here: http://www.darkaudacity.com/inspire.html

Icons

The icons in DarkAudacity are based on the icons from Google's Material Design icon set. They have been inverted so that they are light on dark.

Hi Dpi

DarkAudacity based on 2.1.3 won't support Hi Dpi. It is intended that a future version will. The work in making DarkAudacity themable puts all the images into one place, so that making a higher resolution version of the images is much less work.

Bonus Content

Additional content as part of the DarkAudacity initiative is being worked on:

• A short supplement to the manual. A tour guide of existing features (Audacity 2.1.2). Addresses the problem that many users don't know about features, such as labels or spectral selection. Gives users the names of the features, and outline of what they are for, so there is a kind of road map of what is possible.
• A theme-kit (for Audacity 2.1.2). Gives orange on black and a taste of the theming in DarkAudacity.