Help, my cat jumped on my keyboard in the middle of my editing and threw me into some mode where there are white borders along the top and bottom. This squished the visual of the audio and also lowered the volume considerably on playback. How do I get out of this?
That’s probably two separate things.
If the “white borders” look like this:
then your cat has selected the “Multi-tool” (probably by standing on te F6 key).
Press the F1 key to get back to the normal “Selection Tool”.
More info: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/multi_tool.html
“Lowered the volume considerably on playback” is probably due to your cat moving the track “Gain” slider. Move it back to the center position.
See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audio_tracks.html#gain
Mine looks like this:
Please post a screenshot that includes the panel on the left end of the track.
The track is set to “Waveform (dB)” view.
To set it back to normal “Waveform” view, click on the name of the track and select “Waveform” from the dropdown menu.
(See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audio_track_dropdown_menu.html)
The track is also zoomed in vertically. To zoom back out to normal, right click on the vertical scale and select “Zoom Reset”.
(See also: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/vertical_zooming.html)
The track gain and track pan sliders are also moved to the right.
See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audio_tracks.html#gain