Menu flashing, will not save modified project

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

Audacity began behaving very oddly recently.

A modified file will not appear as unsaved, even when newly created, or after saving once and being immediately modified.

I can save a project once, but not more than once without doing a ‘Save project as’ and renaming it - the normal Save option is disabled.

If I attempt to ‘Save as’ without renaming the project, the menu bar flashes rapidly a few times, the saving progress bar does not appear, and no changes are saved.

If I close a modified project, I am not warned to save changes, the file closes, and all changes are lost.


This may have began after I installed another audio editor, and (I think) a different version of ffmpeg? However, the madness continues even after reinstalling Audacity itself, and it’s preferred version of ffmpeg, so I cannot be certain.

Anyone else faced this problem?

I am not finding anything in the Console logs, apart from one lengthy System diagnostic report, possibly from the re-installation of the program.

2

Which Mac version and which Audacity version?

Have you restarted the machine?

Which other audio Editor? Do you leave it active in the dock, or shut it down completely?

Koz

3

If the menu bar flashes, Core Audio thinks you have muted all audio. So I’m curious which other audio editor you’ve installed. OcenAudio?

Also, how have you uninstalled the previous ffmpeg?

4

Core Audio thinks you have muted all audio.

Writing that down.
Koz

5

There are also a couple of sound settings in the Accessability cp in System prefs. And I’ve just noticed that it isn’t the menu bar anymore these days, but the entire screen that flashes.

I’m behind the times again…

6

Some users would kill to turn off “Save changes”, but Audacity supplied by us should not do any of those things.

I suggest you quit the Audacity version you have now, trash it, and download 2.1.0 from Audacity ® | Free, open source, cross-platform audio software for multi-track recording and editing.. Install Audacity properly according to Installation: Do NOT run Audacity from the DMG!!!!

Before using 2.1.0, open Finder, Go > Go to Folder and type:

~/Library/Application Support/audacity/

Delete audacity.cfg in that folder than launch 2.1.0.

Note that if you are on Yosemite, the Audacity menu bar does flash very violently when saving, opening, exporting or importing and we have that tracked as a bug.

Note also that not all actions in a project make the project “dirty” thereby ungreying File > Save Project. For example selecting audio does not alter the project state.


Gale

7

On Yosemite, anyway, the screen flash setting is for when an alert sounds, not when audio is muted.


Gale

8

You’re right Gale. Should have made it clearer…

The menu bar flashes IF audio is muted AND there is an alert sound. And you can enable that as default in Accessibility, f.i. if you have bad hearing or work in an extremely noisy environment.

And nowadays, it’s no longer the menu bar that flashes, but the entire screen, apparently?