Audacity 4.0: Free Audio Program Rebuilt! Much More Professional Now

If you are preparing podcasts, YouTube videos, Shorts, music or just audio recordings, you don't always need an expensive audio editing program. Audacity is one of the free and open source audio recording and editing programs that have been used for many years.

But there was a significant change in 2026: Audacity 4.0 has renewed the program's interface and a significant part of its working logic.

The new version uses a new interface based on Qt. You can organize the panels and toolbars as you wish and save different work areas. For example, you can create a separate working order for podcasting and another for editing music.

One of the most notable changes is clip editing system. You can now more flexibly move audio tracks, overlap them, select and move multiple clips together, and reintroduce part of the audio you trimmed later.

This is especially useful for YouTube creators.

For example in your video:

• You can cut out unnecessary parts of the conversation.

• You can clear silences.

• You can add background music.

• You can adjust the sound levels.

• You can combine multiple audio recordings.

• You can edit the problems in the microphone recording.

• You can export the result in different audio formats.

An important change in Audacity 4.0 is the new .aup4 project format. Old Audacity 3 projects can be opened, but projects saved in the new format cannot be saved back to the old version format. Therefore, it makes sense for those working with old projects to take a backup before updating. It is also stated that some features of Audacity 3 are not yet available in Audacity 4.0.

So don't think "it's free but amateur". Audacity 4.0, specifically podcast, YouTube voiceover and basic music/audio editing.