Hello, I am a 13 year old person who is working on sound for games.
I have a Late-2011 Macbook Air with a 1TB hard drive plugged in with Yosemite installed.
I have Audacity 2.0.6 but recently, it stopped working because it said “Audacity is allready running”. I looked at the Activity Monitor, Force Quit screen, etc and see nothing.
Please give me a simple answer because I am 13 years old and I can’t understand what the heck is going on with audacity.
If you can help me, then thanks! 
Hi,
2.0.6 does not support Yosemite, which might be part of the problem.
If you installed new plugins, try removing them.
Otherwise make sure Audacity is quit, open Finder, Go > Go to Folder and type:
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
Open audacity.cfg in TextEdit. Select all the text and delete it. Then type the following at the top of the file:
NewPrefsInitialized=1
Then try starting Audacity again.
If that doesn’t help, trash 2.0.6, repeat the steps above then try the latest 2.1.0-alpha version from the top of this page: http://www.audacity.homerow.net/index.php?dir=mac/&sort=date&order=desc
Gale
I tried everything and nothing worked.
I tried fixing the CFG file
I tried getting the nightly build
I tried EVERYTHING and nothing is working.
Have you shut down and restarted the computer? Do not allow any other users on the machine except you.
Make sure Audacity is not in your login items in System Preferences (Users section).
When you shut down and Mac asks if you want to restore windows at log in, say No. Then Audacity can’t be running until you launch it.
Gale
Have you shut down and restarted the computer? Do not allow any other users on the machine except you.
I tried, nothing
Make sure Audacity is not in your login items in System Preferences (Users section).
It is not on my login items, nothing
When you shut down and Mac asks if you want to restore windows at log in, say No. Then Audacity can’t be running until you launch it.
I did that, nothing
I feel like there is no soulution 
I am using a 2013 iMac with Yosemite installed, and it was working for two months with Yosemite until yesterday when I got the same message. I looked for the audacity.cfg file and it was not there. The Audacity folder was empty strangely. Perhaps could anyone offer a download of the config file so I could rectify the problem?
Force quit Audacity in Activity Monitor.
Open Finder, Go > Go to Folder and type or copy and paste:
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
That is the folder audacity.cfg is in.
Rename the attached file to “audacity.cfg” (without quotes) and put it in ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/.
Gale
audacity.txt (86 Bytes)
After force quitting Audacity, try the .cfg file I posted above. Just double-click the Audacity icon once to launch it.
Have you asked your teacher or parents for help? They can see your computer, but we can’t. You may want to ask them to do Go > Utilities > Disk Utility > Verify Disk and Repair Permissions.
Gale
Thank you for sending the file, Audacity still wont load on my system and it is really bugging me now.
Sorry but I don’t have many more ideas, beyond you try Verify Disk and Repair Permissions.
What language is the Mac running in?
If you have a Portable Settings folder in the folder where Audacity is, rename that folder so that Audacity uses the cfg file I posted.
Could you take a sreencast: How to record quick, easy screencast videos with Mac OS X showing me Activity Monitor with Audacity not listed, then showing what happens when you execute Audacity? You could upload the video to Dropbox or similar.
Gale
The mac is running in English, so here is a youtube video of what you requested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3-JAuPhVAQ&feature=youtu.be
Thanks for the video.
Have you done Verify Disk and Repair Permissions?
Can you think of any system changes you made immediately prior to this problem occurring? Did you update iTunes or Yosemite? Install new apps?
Make sure no other users are running Audacity.
Then can you try this latest debug build of Audacity 2.1.0-alpha http://www.audacity.homerow.net/index.php?dir=mac%2Faudacity-weekly-debug-2015.02.15-04.15%2F ?
If that fails to launch please let us know and can you attach any reports from /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/ that are from the same time as that attempted launch of the debug build.
Thanks for your patience.
Gale
Can one of you open the Terminal and issue these commands?
echo $TMPDIR
That will show us what the temporary directory on your machine is.
Then show us what is in that directory:
ls -la $TMPDIR
Thanks much,
Leland
I’ve tried everything, and nothing is working 
If you can post the output from the commands listed in:
It might help us to point you in the right direction.
Leland
That’s the command prompt. It’s a little scary but it’s not completely magic.
Go (top of the finder) > Utilities > Terminal.
It will look something like this.
Last login: Fri Mar 6 15:23:31 on console
johnny:~ koz$
johnny is my machine. You type ( in blue):
Last login: Fri Mar 6 15:23:31 on console
johnny:~ koz$ echo $TMPDIR
and then the Return key.
Last login: Fri Mar 6 15:23:31 on console
johnny:~ koz$ echo $TMPDIR
/var/folders/kn/2jn229yx2m7_kjgng3jndfc00000gn/T/
Then you type (in blue)
Last login: Fri Mar 6 15:23:31 on console
johnny:~ koz$ echo $TMPDIR
/var/folders/kn/2jn229yx2m7_kjgng3jndfc00000gn/T/
johnny:~ koz$
johnny:~ koz$
johnny:~ koz$ ls -la $TMPDIR
And press the Enter key.
That command calls for a long response. Pull the terminal window open so you can see it all. Drag-select all the text (like mine above) and paste it into an Audacity forum message. Also see graphic attachment. You can do it as a screen grab, too. Shift-Command-4 and draw a box around the window. Attach it to a message. Scroll down until you see Upload Attachment.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/how-to-attach-files-to-forum-posts/24026/1
This problem has been a very serious one for the Audacity Team and if you can do this it will make everybody’s day a little brighter Thanks.
Koz
You may have heard that Apple OS-X is based on the Linux operating system. We have been unable to find this problem using the regular Mac tools, so this is how to look under the hood at the Linux system.
I haven’t had to speak Linux in a long time.
ls -la $TMPDIR
OK, that’s LIST, LONG version (don’t leave anything out), ALL (include everything), I don’t remember the dollar sign. System default folder? Temporary Directory is pretty simple.
Koz
Well, I kinda fixed it around feb, i forgot how i did it, but recently the glitch strikes again.
Force Quit Audacity.
Open Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder and type:
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
Open the audacity.cfg file in TextEdit and look for the line that says [Directories]. Underneath that line, look what it says for “TempDir”.
Use Go to Folder to open that TempDir location.
Look for a folder called audacity-, for example if your user name on the computer is doaler, look for the audacity-doaler folder. Delete that folder.
That should solve the problem.
Gale
Did that, it works!
Thanks Gale!
Charlie (doaler4sback)