Not sure whether to update my Mac OS to Sequoia 15.2 . I’m currently running Sonoma 14.7 on my Macbook Air 3 with no problems. Has anyone updated and had any problems? Thanks?
Audacity 3.6.4 runs here flawlessly with Sequoia. So, I think 3.7.1 should also work…
(What is a "MacBook Air 3?)
Thanks! My laptop is a Macbook Air with an Apple M3 chip. Sorry for any confusion!
I’m still on Sonoma on my M1, also debating when to upgrade to Sequoia now that it is up to a .2 release, but I hit a problem with Audacity 3.7.1 just now: In order for Audacity to recognize ffmpeg installed with Homebrew I had to brew install ffmpeg@6 which installs ffmpeg 6.1.2 in the ffmpeg@6 directory, because Audacity didn’t recognize some API changes in the ffmpeg 7 . But Audacity 3.7.1 doesn’t recognize ffmpeg 6.1, nor does it recognize the current ffmpeg 7.1.
I re-installed Audacity 3.7.0 and continue to use it with ffmpeg 6.1.2. I haven’t yet tried building ffmpeg 7.0 from source to see if Audacity 3.7.1 did something like implement ffmpeg 7.0 API, dropped use of the ffmpeg 6.0 API, and now there is some incompatible change in ffmpeg 7.1. That would suck, because the ffmpeg developers should not make any incompatible api changes in a point release. And I’m just speculating on that aspect of it. Bottom line, though, is I have to stay with Audacity 3.7.0 with ffmpeg@6 for now.
Thanks, Sidney. I’ve never used ffmpeg; in fact I had to Google it to see what it is!
ffmpeg is really useful for expanding the range of codecs and audio file formats that Audacity can handle on import and export.
ffmpeg is needed by Audacity for writing (and also reading) certain music file types.
ffmpeg is included in Audacity and does not need to be installed using homebrew. As @sidney130 had experienced, brewing a wrong version of ffmpeg does not help much.
If ffmpeg does appear missing, go to the “preferences” menu of Audacity and select “Libraries”. Audacity then tells you which version of ffmpeg is installed and offers you a button to download a matching version, see the attached image.
Part of the problem is that the Download button goes to a site that has not been updated with anything that works on Mac silicon.
Thank you both.
I’m running Audacity 3.5.1 on a Macbook Air M3 chip with Sequoia 15.1.1. After seeing all of the posts from people having problems with Audacity updates, I decided to set my Audacity to not automatically update. I’m new to Mac; I bought this when my Windows laptop crashed about 6 months ago. I’ve not had any issues - except for the learning curve with the Mac and much smaller learning curve with this version of Audacity. I was using a much older version of Audacity on my Windows 10 laptop (and an even older version on the Windows 7 laptop that I was using as a backup computer before I bought and set up the Mac).
Please tell me where you can set this. Audacity informs you about possible updates - but it does not automatically update itself. You can disable the information about new versions - but since there is no auto-update, you can’t enable/disable what is not there.
Maybe that’s the setting I turned off, then. It’s been several months, so I really don’t remember. I just know I decided not to update because I saw a lot of posts about issues with newer versions. The version I have is doing what I want to do, so sometimes the old saying has merit: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 
However, I did go ahead and update my Mac when the update showed up as a notification in settings. I don’t rush to update anything, in case there are bugs that need to be worked out. Usually the Apple updates have been out for awhile before I get a notification on my devices.
I just reinstalled ffmpeg (latest version, 7.1) with homebrew and re-installed Audacity 3.7.1, on a Macbook Pro M1, and Audacity found the ffmpeg libraries fine. So my claim that it does not work was wrong, it has been fixed.