How to recover a corrupted Audacity project and prevent the next one
To recover a corrupted Audacity project, first copy the broken file somewhere safe and work only on the copy. Then open the copy in the latest Audacity, 4.0.1 or 3.7.9. If it still won’t open, run the free Audacity Project Tools: -drop_autosave first, then -recover_db -recover_project. If nothing works, send the project to the Audacity team, who collect broken projects to recover them and fix the cause.
This guide takes you through those three steps in order, then what to try when the tools fail. It explains the error messages one by one, why projects break and the habits that stop the next one from breaking.
Tested on Audacity 4.0.1 on macOS Sequoia and Audacity 3.7.9 on Windows 11. Shortcuts are written for Windows; macOS uses Cmd where Windows uses Ctrl.
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First, protect the broken file
Every repair attempt writes to a file. Before you try anything, make a copy, so that a failed attempt can’t make the original worse.
- Close Audacity. Don’t press Save on a project that just showed an error; that writes the damage into the file.
- Copy the project file. In Audacity 4 it is one
.aup4file; in Audacity 3, one.aup3file. Put the copy in a new folder on your computer’s internal drive, even if the project lived on a USB stick or in a cloud folder, and keep the original untouched. - Look for its companions. While a project is open, two small files sit beside it, ending in
-waland-shm(.aup4-waland.aup4-shmin Audacity 4,.aup3-waland.aup3-shmin Audacity 3). They disappear when the project closes normally, so if they are still there after a crash, they can hold your latest changes. Copy them along with the project. - Check your free space. A full disk is one of the causes, and the repair needs room. For an
.aup3, plan on about four times the project’s size.
Step 1: Open it in the latest version
The Audacity support team puts this first because it costs nothing. In its words, “Sometimes, just opening the file in the latest version automatically recovers the project.” It won’t undo damage a bug has already written into the file, though; the Audacity team’s advice for that is to recover the project first, in Step 2 or 3. Recent releases fixed the bugs behind several kinds of damage, according to the Audacity changelog:
- Audacity 4.0.1 (30 September 2026) fixed project corruption after a failed save and clips getting mixed up when an
.aup3project is converted. - Audacity 3.7.9 (1 September 2026) fixed corruption when the disk runs out of space, when a drive is disconnected right after a project is closed, and when a recovered project is closed without saving.
Open your copy with File ▸ Open (Ctrl+O), or with Open other… on the Home screen. If Audacity offers to restore anything, accept, then straight away choose File ▸ Save as… and save the result under a new name.
An .aup3 project opens in both versions. Audacity 4 converts it to .aup4 and leaves the original file as it was, so trying Audacity 4 first is safe. A converted project can’t be saved back to .aup3. MuseHub installs both versions side by side and keeps them updated.
Step 2: Run Audacity Project Tools
Audacity Project Tools is a free command-line repair utility from the Audacity team. It repairs Audacity 3 .aup3 projects and, since version 1.0.6 of October 2026, Audacity 4 .aup4 projects. It handles the errors “Audacity failed to read from a file” and codes 11, 13 and 101. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Set your expectations: the support page gives no guarantee that any content comes back. Download the latest release from the link on the official recovering corrupted projects page, and check that you have about four times the project’s size free: 40 GB for a 10 GB project.
On Windows:
- Make a work folder. In Downloads, create a folder called AudRepair.
- Add the tools. Unzip the download and move its two
.exefiles into AudRepair. - Add the project. Copy your broken
.aup3into AudRepair and rename itbroken.aup3. - Open the command prompt. Press Windows+R, type
cmdand press Enter. - Go to the folder. Type
cd Downloads\AudRepairand press Enter. Typedir, and the list should showaudacity-project-tools.exe,broken.aup3andsqlite3.exe. - Try the quick repair. Type
audacity-project-tools -drop_autosave broken.aup3and press Enter. The message “Project requires Audacity 3.0.0” is normal. - Open the result. Type
diragain. Ifbroken.recovered.aup3is there, open it in Audacity. If it plays as it should, save it to your usual folder with File ▸ Save Project ▸ Save Project As… and you’re done. - Try the deep repair. If no recovered file appeared, or it is still broken, type
audacity-project-tools -recover_db -recover_project broken.aup3and press Enter. It rebuilds the project from its database, which takes 15–30 minutes per gigabyte and shows no progress bar. Wait, and watch your free space while it runs. If a stray character such as “z” appears when it finishes, press Backspace. - Open
broken.recovered.aup3.
On macOS and Linux the steps are the same in Terminal (or Konsole on Linux), with three differences. Go to the folder with cd ~/Downloads/AudRepair and list it with ls. Make the two programs executable with chmod +x audacity-project-tools sqlite3. Start each command with ./, as in ./audacity-project-tools -drop_autosave broken.aup3.
Two messages may appear when you open the recovered project. “File not saved properly” on the first open is normal, and you can ignore it. “Invalid block xxxx: Block not found” is usually harmless as well. Still, listen to the most recent edits, because that is where audio may have been replaced by silence. If a section is gone, re-record that section and paste it in.
The tools can’t promise a full recovery, and sometimes they recover nothing. The next step covers what is left.
Step 3: When the tools can’t fix it
Keep the untouched original whatever happens. A later release or a person with more tools may still get more out of it.
- Send it to the Audacity team. For a project from Audacity 3 or 4 that still won’t open, the team collects them in GitHub issue #12408, linked from its forum post We want your corrupted projects!. Attach the project, with its
-waland-shmfiles if they are next to it, to the issue rather than the forum thread, and describe what you did before it broke: that helps the developers recover your audio and find the bug. Updating Audacity does not repair a project that is already damaged; it has to be recovered first. A recovery tool built into Audacity itself is planned for Audacity 4.1. - Audacity 3 projects the tools can’t open. Post in the forum with the error text and the project size. An Audacity developer has shared a recovery script there for projects whose track list no longer matches the stored audio (forum thread); he says himself it is not meant for everyday users.
- Your cloud folder’s version history. If the project sat in OneDrive or a similar service, the service may hold earlier versions of the file. One forum user restored an older, working version from OneDrive’s version history (forum thread). Download the restored copy to the internal drive before you open it.
- The worst case. When the project itself can’t be rebuilt, the audio inside it can sometimes still be pulled out as thousands of short WAV files, numbered in order, to be joined back together by hand. A forum helper did this for a three-hour voiceover after every repair had failed (forum thread). It is slow and loses your edits. The recording itself survives.
Error messages and what to do
| Message | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| “Audacity failed to read from a file in C:” (or D:, E:, /) | Audacity can’t read part of the project’s internal database, usually some of the stored audio | Step 1, then Project Tools in Step 2 |
| Error code 11, 13 or 101 | Database error codes behind the same failure; 13 means the database or disk is full | Free up space first, then Steps 1 and 2 |
| “Unable to parse project information.” | Audacity can’t read the part of the file that describes your tracks and clips | Steps 1 and 2; if they fail, the forum and the sample-block route in Step 3 |
| “Connection to project file is null” (Audacity 4) | An .aup4 project can’t be opened | Project Tools (Step 2), then send it to the Audacity team (Step 3) |
| “The previous session quit unexpectedly. Do you want to restore the session?” (Audacity 4) | Audacity closed without saving and kept recovery data | Choose Yes, check the project, then save it under a new name |
| “This project was not saved properly the last time Audacity ran.” (Audacity 3) | The project was rolled back to its last safe snapshot after a crash | Check the end of your last edit; the final action may be missing |
| “File not saved properly” on a recovered project | Expected on the first open after Project Tools | Ignore it and save the project |
| Audio missing after a crash, no recovery offered | The recovery data was lost, most often in an unattended Windows-update reboot | The unsaved part can’t be restored; the prevention list below stops a repeat |
| “This project was created with a newer version of Audacity. You will need to upgrade to open it.” (Audacity 3) | The project is an Audacity 4 .aup4 file, which Audacity 3 can’t read; dragged into Audacity 3, it gives “Incorrect filetype” | Open it in Audacity 4 |
Why projects get corrupted
An Audacity project file is a database. Audacity reads and writes to it constantly while you record and edit, and anything that interrupts those writes can leave it half-updated.
- USB sticks, external drives, network and cloud-synced folders. The Audacity support page on saving projects warns against saving active projects on external drives, USB sticks or network storage. The reason it gives is that “Audacity requires fast, uninterrupted access to your storage when recording and editing.” A forum moderator put the rule in two sentences: “Audacity can work with your machine’s internal drive or the Audio.com network drive service. Full Stop.” (forum). Cloud-synced folders such as OneDrive fall under the same rule, and several of the damaged projects brought to the forum lived in one.
- A full disk. When there is no room left, a save can stop halfway. Audacity 3.7.9 fixed several data-loss cases tied to this, and the damage done before the fix stays in the file.
- Crashes and bugs. A crash during a save or an edit can leave the database out of step with the project. Audacity 4.0.1 fixed several crashes that could corrupt a project, and the Audacity team has confirmed one more bug in 4.0.1 that can damage project files; its fix is planned for Audacity 4.0.2. Until then, keep numbered copies of anything important (see the list below).
- A Windows update reboot with the project open. A forum moderator reproduced recovery failing after an unattended reboot for a Windows update on Audacity 3.7.5, and filed a bug (forum thread). In that case the unsaved work from the session is lost.
- Closing a recovered project without saving. Audacity 3.7.9 fixed a case where this damaged the project. Save a recovered project before you close it, whatever version you use.
How to keep your next project safe
- Work on the internal drive. Save the project there and copy it to a USB stick, a NAS or a cloud folder only after you close it in Audacity.
- Press Ctrl+S often. Save as soon as you start recording and after each block of edits. Only a save updates the version the project opens to.
- Keep a WAV of every raw recording. Export it right after recording with File ▸ Export audio (Ctrl+Shift+E), Export to computer, and WAV (Microsoft) as the format, and store it away from the computer. The Audacity audiobook mastering guide asks narrators to do exactly this, so a damaged project never means recording the chapter again.
- Save numbered versions. For long projects, use File ▸ Save as… to start
episode-v2,episode-v3and so on at milestones. A broken file then costs you one session. - Leave room on the disk. Keep several times the project’s size free, since recording, saving and any repair all need space.
- Save to audio.com if you need a network copy. Audacity’s own cloud saving is the network option it supports. Choose File ▸ Save to cloud with a free audio.com account; the Audacity 4 manual says cloud projects “are backed up and versioned”, so you can go back to an earlier state.
- Stay on the current version. Both 3.7.9 and 4.0.1 fixed causes of corruption, and 4.0.2 is due to fix another. MuseHub updates Audacity for you.
- Schedule Windows updates. Set Windows Update’s active hours to cover the times you work, so an automatic restart can’t close an unsaved project.
Why is my Audacity project file so big?
A project file holds all of its audio, uncompressed, plus the undo history. Every edit you can still undo with Ctrl+Z keeps its own copy of the audio it changed. A long session of edits can make the file much larger than the recordings in it. Importing a file also copies its audio into the project, so a compressed FLAC or MP3 takes more room once it is inside.
Audacity cleans this up for you. When you close a project, it discards the undo history and compacts the file down to what the project needs. Neither Audacity 4.0.1 nor Audacity 3.7.9 has a menu command or button for this; closing the project does the job.
A big file is still a healthy one. It does take longer to save and copy, and it needs more free space to repair, which is one more reason to work in numbered versions.
FAQ
Next steps
How to use Audacity covers saving, cloud projects and export in the full workflow. How to record audio in Audacity sets up a recording that is saved from the first minute, and what’s missing in Audacity 4 helps you decide which version to keep a project in. Get both Audacity versions and their updates in one place — download MuseHub free.