Is it possible to install Audacity 3.7 and 4.0 side by side?

Audacity 4
1

Hello everyone,

I’d like to have a go at Audacity 4. However, as version 4 is still missing a few features that are important to me, I can’t do without the old version 3.7.9 just yet.

Hence my question as to whether the two versions can be installed side by side without affecting one another. Of course, I only have one running at a time, not both at the same time.

I use Audacity on Windows 11.

Thank you very much and best regards
Christian

2

By default, Audacity 4 installs itself to C:\Program Files\Audacity 4 while Audacity 3 and earlier installs itself to C:\Program Files\Audacity. So yes, they live fine side-by-side, and you can even have both running at the same time.

3

Hi Leo,

thanks for the reply. I will give it a try then.

Best regards
Christian

4

Audacity2 & Audacity3, by default*, will share “audacity.cfg” and corrupt each other, (not backwards compatible ).

So you’re saying this is not the case for Audacity3 & Audcaity4 ? :thinking:

[ * Adding “Portable Settings” folder(s) is necessary to keep versions separate ].

5

Audacity 4 uses an .ini file for preferences, and also lives in a different folder in %appdata%. So they don’t interfere at all.

6

I’m curios to know if the clipboard data is compatible so one can copy audio in one version and paste it in the other version.

7

Hi everybody,

I’ve now tested this and can confirm that versions 3.7.9 and 4.0.0 can be installed side by side on Windows 11 and it seems they don’t interfere with one another.

@Wrecks0 Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to copy audio back and forth between the two versions via the clipboard. At least, I wasn’t able to do so.

As I had feared, I cannot use version 4.0.0 for my purposes. This version simply still has too many limitations compared to version 3.7.9. I don’t want to go into details here, as most of this has already been discussed in this forum.

Best regards
Christian

8

For those interested in launching Audacity 4 without installation on Windows:

It won’t be fully portable, as it will still create an “Audacity4” folder in the Documents folder and write an .aup4 file association in the registry. Aside from that, however, it will be an isolated, non-installing launching environment.

Extract the installer to your desired working folder:

msiexec /a "C:\downloads\audacity-win-4.0.0-x86_64.msi" /passive TARGETDIR="C:\test\audacity4"

Create a launcher in that folder (C:\test\audacity4\launch.bat) that sets environment variables for this CMD session only:

@echo off
setlocal

rem set the current folder as the session's user profile
set "ROOT=%~dp0"
rem strip the trailing slash
if "%ROOT:~-1%"=="\" (
  set "ROOT=%ROOT:~0,-1%"
  )
set "USERPROFILE=%ROOT%"

rem keep these synced
set "HOMEDRIVE=%~d0"
set "HOMEPATH=%~p0"

rem strip the trailing slash if we're not in the drive root
if not "%HOMEPATH%"=="\" (
    if "%HOMEPATH:~-1%"=="\" set "HOMEPATH=%HOMEPATH:~0,-1%"
)

set "APPDATA=%ROOT%\AppData\Roaming"
set "LOCALAPPDATA=%ROOT%\AppData\Local"
rem these won't be set automatically
set "TEMP=%LOCALAPPDATA%\Temp"
set "TMP=%TEMP%"

if not exist "%APPDATA%" mkdir "%APPDATA%"
if not exist "%LOCALAPPDATA%" mkdir "%LOCALAPPDATA%"
if not exist "%TEMP%" mkdir "%TEMP%"

title Audacity 4 Launcher
start "" /wait "%ROOT%\Audacity 4\bin\Audacity4.exe"

endlocal

It will create the C:\test\audacity4\AppData folder, which the program and its child processes will use instead of your user profile when started via the launcher.