Audio Recording checkpoints

I don’t believe there is a feature like this but I would find it immensely valuable.

I record scripted narration for a youtube channel. Often I will record each sentence of a longer take a few times. 99.9% of the time I’m only interested in the last take of any given passage but editing out all the other takes is very time consuming.
The tool I would love would work like this: I would start recording and say a sentence, if I’m happy with that sentence I would press a key which would checkpoint at the end of the sentence and recording continues. I would say the next sentence, and if I decide to record it again, I would press a different key which would skip back to the last checkpoint erasing my take since the last checkpoint. I would keep doing this until I have a sentence I like then I would checkpoint again and continue.

This would eliminate 95% of my editing and save me many hours as I would only have the takes I like. Thank you for considering this request.

What happens if you have a few more goes, and then think that the first take was actually the best one?

You could add a “marker” (label) at that point (“Ctrl + M”). See: Label Tracks - Audacity Manual

What happens if you have a few more goes, and then think that the first take was actually the best one?

For the massive gains in productivity, I’m willing to take that risk. Worst case the last take is usable, but it’s also almost always the best.
I could also checkpoint the same words more than once if I want to give myself options. Almost always it’s takes I know are trash, like I misspeak or stumble a little that are the ones I want to dump immediately.

You could add a “marker” (label) at that point (“Ctrl + M”). See: > Label Tracks - Audacity Manual

I do occasionally use labels when I’m editing as sometimes I have enough takes it becomes confusing. This helps me keep them straight as I cull. But that’s cumbersome and only useful when I’m editing. I haven’t tried during recording, but I have Audacity recording in an unfocused window, so it’s not going to work for me.

If I can avoid having the takes I know I don’t want at all it would be a large help.

There a three press combination:
Space → Ctrl + Z → R

Unfortunately Audacity does not yet support macro commands, but if you want to use “Ctrl + Z” a lot, then you could reassign the shortcut to a single key. See here for customising shortcuts: Shortcuts Preferences - Audacity Manual

An alternative would be to use an automation program such as AutoHotKey to automate "Space → Ctrl + Z → R " as a single key press.
Improving and extending automation in Audacity is one of the areas that is currently under development.