How to trim and cut audio in Audacity
To trim audio in Audacity 4, click the clip’s header and drag the top handle at either edge inwards; the audio past the edge is hidden, not deleted, so you can drag it back out. To cut a section, drag across it in the waveform and press Ctrl+X, or Delete to remove it without copying it. The first time you delete part of a clip, Audacity asks whether to leave a gap or close it, and remembers your answer.
This guide covers selecting audio and clips, trimming with the handles, the difference between cut, delete, silence and delete-and-close-gap, splitting and joining clips, moving them, fading the edges, undo, and exporting only what you edited. It ends with what MuseHub adds once the cut is clean.
Tested on Audacity 4.0.1 on macOS Sequoia; the screenshots are from that build. Shortcuts are written for Windows; macOS uses Cmd where Windows uses Ctrl. On Audacity 3, several of these commands sit in other menus.
Audacity and free effects to start with
What you need
- Audacity 4, free for Windows, macOS and Linux. Everything in this guide is built in; no plugin is needed to trim or cut. If it is not installed yet, how to use Audacity covers the install and the first recording.
- A recording to edit. Record one, or drag an MP3 or WAV into the project. Each file becomes a clip, a block of audio on a track with a name bar (the header) along its top.
Step 1: Select what you want to change
Audacity has two kinds of selection, and the command you press next depends on which one you made.
- A time range. Click in the waveform and drag left or right. Dragging downwards as well selects the same stretch on every track you pass over. Shift+click extends the selection to the point you click. Hold Ctrl and scroll to zoom in and place the edges exactly.
- A whole clip. Click the clip’s header, or double-click in its body, and the clip shows its handles. Shift+click another clip on the same track to select both and everything between them; Ctrl+click picks clips one at a time on any track.
Double-clicking an empty part of a track selects all of its audio; Ctrl+A selects everything in the project. The manual’s page on selecting and moving clips lists the rest.
Step 2: Trim the ends with the clip handles
Trimming shortens a clip from its start or end, and in Audacity 4 nothing is thrown away.
- Select the clip. Click its header. Two pairs of handles appear at its edges.
- Pick the top handle. Use the top handle at the edge you want to shorten. The lower handles, marked with a clock, stretch the clip’s speed; leave them alone.
- Drag inwards. Stop where you want the clip to start or end.
The trimmed audio is kept past the clip’s edge. Drag the edge back out and it returns, in this session or the next time you open the project. If several clips are selected, the handles trim all of them at once.
To trim from a selection instead, select the part you want to keep and click Trim in the toolbar. The selection stays and the rest of that clip is hidden, as with the handles, not deleted; other clips on the track are not touched. Ctrl+T, the Audacity 3 shortcut, does nothing in Audacity 4.
Step 3: Cut, delete or silence a section
Removing a section in the middle is where the three commands differ. All three start from a time-range selection.
- Cut (Ctrl+X) removes the selection and puts it on the clipboard, so you can paste it elsewhere with Ctrl+V.
- Delete (Delete or Backspace) removes the selection and keeps the clipboard as it was.
- Silence audio (Ctrl+L) replaces the selection with silence. The clip keeps its length, so everything after it stays where it was. Use it for a cough or a click in a recording that has to stay in time with a video or another track.
The first time you delete part of a clip, Audacity asks what to do with the space the audio leaves behind. Leave gap removes the audio and nothing else moves. Close gap (ripple) removes it and slides the later audio back to fill the hole. Choose Close gap and Audacity also asks whether to close the gap in the selected clip, in all clips on the same track, or in all clips on all tracks. Click Apply, and Audacity stops asking.
With Leave gap, the track ends up as two clips with empty space between them. To change the choice later, open Preferences ▸ Audio editing; the same page sets whether pasted audio overlaps later clips or pushes them along.
Whatever you chose, the other behavior is in the Edit menu. Edit ▸ Delete and close gap (per track), Shift+Delete, removes the selection and always closes the gap on its track. To close it on every track at once, so a voice and the music under it stay together, use the all-tracks variant, which has no menu item: press Ctrl+Delete. Closing the gap across all tracks is what Sync-Lock did in Audacity 3; ripple editing replaced it. The Edit menu page in the manual lists every variant.
Step 4: Split a clip and join it back
A split cuts one clip into two at a point, without removing any audio. Each half is then its own clip, so you can delete, move or trim one without touching the other.
- Split tool (S). Press S, or click Split tool in the toolbar. A guideline follows the pointer across the clip; click to split there. The part left of the cut is selected, ready to delete. Press S again to turn the tool off.
- Split command (Ctrl+I). Edit ▸ Clip ▸ Split splits once at the edit cursor; with a time range selected it splits at both edges, leaving the selected stretch as a clip of its own.
To undo a split later, select the pieces and press Ctrl+J (Edit ▸ Clip ▸ Join selected clips); they must sit next to each other on the same track. For a long recording, Split clips at silences (Ctrl+Alt+J) does the whole job in one pass.
Step 5: Move clips into place
Drag a clip by its header to move it along the track, onto another track, or into the empty space below the tracks, which creates a new track for it. Dragging inside the body makes a selection instead, which is the usual reason a clip “will not move”. Dropping a clip on top of another is allowed; the clip underneath is overwritten where they overlap, and Undo restores it.
Step 6: Fade the edges
A cut that lands mid-wave can click. Before you split or cut, press Z to move the cursor to the closest zero crossing, where the waveform passes through silence. After the cut, select the first or last fraction of a second of the clip and apply Effect ▸ Fading ▸ Fade In or Fade Out. There is no dialog; the fade covers exactly the selection, so the length you select is the length of the fade. Both are one-off effects that change the waveform, applied the way how to use effects in Audacity describes.
Step 7: Undo, then export
Ctrl+Z reverses the last edit and keeps going back through the session; Ctrl+Shift+Z steps forward again.
When the edit is right, choose File ▸ Export audio… (Ctrl+Shift+E). Audacity first asks where the audio goes; click Export to computer to open the Export dialog. Its Type setting decides what is rendered. Full project audio mixes every track into one file, Selected audio renders only the current selection, and Audio in loop region renders what falls inside the loop. Two more types write each track or each labeled region to a file of its own. Audio you trimmed off with the handles stays hidden and is not exported. Exporting makes a copy; your project and its clips are unchanged.
Trim, cut, delete, silence and split compared
All five start from a selection; they differ in what happens next to the track and to the other tracks.
| Command | Shortcut | The selection | The rest of the track | Other tracks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trim | Handles or the Trim button | Kept | The rest of that clip is hidden, not deleted; nothing moves | Unchanged |
| Cut | Ctrl+X | Removed, copied to the clipboard | Gap left or closed, as you chose at the first delete | Unchanged unless you chose all tracks |
| Delete | Delete | Removed, clipboard untouched | Gap left or closed, as you chose; Edit ▸ Delete and close gap (per track) always closes it | Unchanged; the all-tracks variant closes the gap on every track |
| Silence audio | Ctrl+L | Replaced with silence | Nothing moves; the clip keeps its length | Unchanged |
| Split | Ctrl+I or S | Nothing removed | The clip becomes two clips at the cut | Unchanged |
Common mistakes
- Cutting the wrong track. A time-range selection dragged downwards covers every track it crosses, and Delete on a selected clip removes the whole clip. Check which tracks are highlighted before you press the key; Ctrl+Z brings back what vanished.
- A gap where the cut was. Delete leaves the later audio where it is unless you chose to close the gap. Use Edit ▸ Delete and close gap (per track), Shift+Delete, for that one edit, or change the default in Preferences ▸ Audio editing.
- The other tracks fell out of sync. Delete and close gap (per track) works on its own track only. When a voice track has music under it, use the all-tracks variant (Ctrl+Delete) so both move together.
- Exporting the whole project. With Type set to Full project audio, the export is the mix of everything, and the dialog reopens with the settings you used last. To export only the selection, set Type to Selected audio.
- Trimming with the wrong handle. The lower, clock-marked handles change the clip’s speed. If a clip shows a percentage badge in its corner after a “trim”, click the badge and set it back to 100.
Keyboard shortcuts
- Select all: Ctrl+A
- Cut · Copy · Paste: Ctrl+X · Ctrl+C · Ctrl+V
- Delete: Delete or Backspace
- Delete and close gap (per track): Shift+Delete
- Delete and close gap on all tracks: Ctrl+Delete
- Silence audio: Ctrl+L
- Split: Ctrl+I · Split tool — S
- Join selected clips: Ctrl+J · Split clips at silences — Ctrl+Alt+J
- Move cursor to closest zero crossing: Z
- Zoom in · out · fit project: Ctrl+= · Ctrl+- · Ctrl+F
- Undo · Redo: Ctrl+Z · Ctrl+Shift+Z
- Export audio: Ctrl+Shift+E
- Play / Stop: Space
The full default set, with the macOS column, is on the manual’s keyboard shortcuts page.
Effects after the edit
What most edited recordings need next is cleanup and level, a voice at one volume with the room noise gone, and that is what MuseHub adds. Its Plugins section installs VST3 and AU effects into the folders Audacity scans; the free MuseFX collection from Muse Group covers level, tone, pitch and a mastering chain. Once validated, they sit in the Realtime effects panel (press E) and apply on export, so you can keep cutting while they run. Get Audacity and the effects in one place — download MuseHub free.
FAQ
Next steps
With the basic edits in hand, how to edit a podcast in Audacity runs the whole chain from import to MP3, how to use effects in Audacity covers the cleanup that comes after the cut, and making audio louder evens out the level. Audacity 4 itself is on its MuseHub page.
