Sounds like the basis of a formal Proposal for the Wiki Steve … 
Peter
You guys have completely doped the timeline bar, it’s perfect. Right now in 2.1.1, wherever you select, it starts playing automatically. Simply awesome, I’ve been looking for this since forever. Thank you!
Now the topic, c’mon, I myself use a lot the loop playback ,and it’s easy as pie. As steve said, you just got to press “Shift”, and the play button automatically even changes its icon and shows the loop button.
But if you really need a faster way to loop, what I’ve done is to shortcut the loop to the key “L”. I press one key and it loops whatever I have selected. So I don’t see why the heck you need an extra button up there, it’s needless and a waste of space and clarity.
I am also a musician. 
Audacity is puro gold to all of us.
Well you have to thank Steve for the recent development on the Timeline. I did a lot of the QA testing for him and as I was doing it I was thinking “this is good stuff” - so it’s good to hear feedback from a user that likes it too 
+1 I’m minded to agree with you - I don’t like button clutter
And Steve is too - he plays a mean fiddle
If someone’s work methods involve or require the mouse, it is often more convenient to use the mouse for all actions rather than to have to switch to keyboard for one of the actions.
We already have a Preferences option (to me, rather pointless) for a different Transport Toolbar layout. We could have another layout with more and smaller buttons. Loop Play and “Stop and Set Cursor” would be two useful additions (IMO).
Gale
Yeah, that’s totally right, switching from mouse to keyboard can be annoying, but in this case is just one key, and more important, moving the mouse too much can also be annoying. For example, if I select a section of a track and then press shourtcut key “L” that loops the selection, the cursor stays in the waveform area and don’t have to precisely move the mouse to a button in the upper area and the if I want to change the selection, moving again it to the waveform area.
This is subjective. Anyways, that’s why I created a post saying that right button is underused in mouses. You could right click the play button and that action could loop your selection. I still prefer to use a shortcut, but I know that can be helpful for someone.
And also, that’s why I was kind of disappointment when version 2.1.0 of Audacity didn’t create a new project (new window) if you click a shortcut. You say it’s only “Ctrl+N”, but in reality, I’m navigating in my music folder, I’m using the mouse, and it’s quite more efficient to open a new project by just clicking the Audacity shortcut I have in the taskbar and drag and drop the files I want, than switching to the Audacity window and use the keyboard.
It could not be the only solution to it IMO. Some pointing devices do not have easily used right-click, and right-clicking a button may not be expected or discoverable.
Gale
Yeah, I understand that, I just gave an idea. Right-click in Windows is so basic my grandma knows how to use it. Nevertheless, you’re right about not being expected. But that can be solved by just letting users know that you can right-click now many buttons and areas and new features or actions are there.
For example, in the Pan bar, it’s “unexpected” that if you right click it, it goes from wherever you set to to 0. But that’s a very common action in many players and software.
Also, that’s why it’s so important to show and let know users about new release changes, or at least the most important.
Can you give some examples of such software?
Don’t we do that now? But we can assume more users never read the Manual or Release Notes than do read them.
Gale
AIMP3, it’s a music player and it’s brilliant to change to default settings by just right-clicking the slide bar. Otherwise you would have to mess with precision with the mouse, cause you may be go from -1 to 1, then back to -1, and so on, 'till you finally accomplish the mission and set the value to 0.
I’ve used more music tools and pan and gain slide bars had that, but I’ve been using only Audacity for 2 years now, and I don’t remember any of them.
Yeah, you have that, but most users don’t read nothing. That’s kinda your problem. When you update Audacity, the first time you open the new version, a pop-up of new important changes (brief, cause otherwise no one would read it) should appear, as well as a message saying the version you’re using. Anyways, if you consider something “unexpected”, then you can apply that same logic to almost any new feature you add to audacity.
How do you make it brief, and yet comprehensive enough so that the minor change for right-click to reset the gain and pan slider is seen?
Perhaps, more could be done at the point of update. The README is shown at the end of the Windows installer but it is not obvious that you can see the list of changes in the new version there.
If Help > Check for Updates… reached an interactive page, we could display a “new features” list there.
Gale
Help/About Audacity… I think would be perfect to show a tab that shows new changes.
Again it relies on users realising that information can be accessed from the Help Menu.
Context-sensitive help would be more efficient. Could we justify a little Help symbol in the first track, to left of the collapse/expand button?
Gale
I don’t think a screen showing all new changes and new features fit at all in the help menu. That’s not help stuff, it’s “about” stuff, what’s new. It’s about the current installed version of Audacity, that’s why I think it makes more sense to add a tab of new features and changes in the “About Audacity…” menu. Or you simply could use the Help menu to redirect to the internet release changes and still add that new features tab to the About menu.
This simple FR seems to have blossomed into several:
-
A loop playback button - the original request and one that some of us see no need for - and for which votes have been transferred to the pre-existing Feature Request on the Wiki
-
a Preferences layout for more, smaller buttons on Transport Toolbar
-
For those that like buttons, it could be good if more (all?) the toolbars were customizable.
For example,
- optional additional buttons for user preset zoom levels (https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/zoom-view-snap-back-feature/39077/10)
- half height transport buttons for people that want to maximize available screen area
- Loop play button (as per this request)
- Optional extra buttons for edit actions (split, duplicate, split delete, …)
Gale: Yes absolutely. View > Toolbars > Customize… as in a web browser.
-
We already have a Preferences option (to me, rather pointless) for a different Transport Toolbar layout. We could have another layout with more and smaller buttons. Loop Play and “Stop and Set Cursor” would be two useful additions (IMO).
-
If Help > Check for Updates… reached an interactive page, we could display a “new features” list there.
rambomhtri: Help/About Audacity… I think would be perfect to show a tab that shows new changes.
Gale: Context-sensitive help would be more efficient. Could we justify a little Help symbol in the first track, to left of the collapse/expand button?
Peter.
Why do I always have to agree 100% with you?
Are you that lost brother my parents always talked about? 
Thanks!
What happened to the loop button you were planning 3 years ago? If it’s there, I can’t find it.
Who are you addressing? Who was planning to add a loop playback button?
You can loop play a selection with the shortcut “Shift + Space”.
Loop playback is also available via the Timeline “Quick Play”. For more information, see: Timeline - Audacity Manual
Sorry, I’m addressing the folks at Audacity. who were participating in this discussion when it started 3 years ago. Specifically “steve” and “Gale Andrews”.
I’m aware of how to play a loop. Were you aware that it took me a half-hour of weeding through wrong answers from my search results to finally figure out how? I wonder why Audacity would rather have folks do that than provide a normal button. Also, why they don’t extend their logic and get rid of the record button, too, since there’s a keyboard equivalent (‘r’) that’s even easier than ‘shift-space’.
Anyway, the discussion still has the same name, so I thought it was the same discussion.
Gale passed away last year.
I’m steve, and I developed the “Quick Play loop” feature. As I wrote previously, now that we have that, I’m not convinced that we need a dedicated “Loop Play” button.
One of the developers is considering adding “multi-buttons” at some stage - this could posibly meet that need,
See his proposal in the Audacity Wiki: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Proposal_MultiButtons
WC