Nyquist effects "not found"

billw58 · September 9, 2026, 6:49pm

I’m on macOS 26.6.2. All the nyquist effects appear in the Effect menu, and all show as “Status:OK” in the Plugin Manager. But invoking any nyquist effect results in an “Effect not found” error.

I’ve tried disabling then enabling the nyquist effects in the Plugin Manager with no joy.

The nyquist effects are in the application bundle.

Is anyone else seeing this? I’d like to know it’s not just me before I raise an issue on Gibhub.

steve · September 10, 2026, 9:30am

I’ve seen another report about this (on Linux), but I can’t find it now and I wasn’t able to reproduce it. I suspect it’s a real issue, but more info would be helpful.

Have you tried launching Audacity from the console to see if there’s any warnings / errors?

billw58 · September 11, 2026, 12:40am

No errors. Audacity 4 opens the same as double-clicking the app icon AFAICT.

Bill@Bills-Macbook-Pro ~ % open /Applications/Audacity\ 4.app

Bill@Bills-Macbook-Pro ~ %

billw58 · September 11, 2026, 5:54pm

Solved.

In ~/Library/Application Support/audacity/Audacity4/

I disabled (by renaming) known_audio_plugins.json.

On launching Audacity I got the “Validate plugins” message.

The Nyquist plugins are back.

steve · September 11, 2026, 6:05pm

Have you found any documentation regarding where Audacity 4 writes its configuration files? On Linux I keep finding bits of Audacity data across the system. I’ve no idea how to do a true “clean install”.

billw58 · September 11, 2026, 6:45pm

Nope. I guess I’m lucky they re-used the old settings folder.

I found this:

github.com/audacity/audacity

Audacity 4 uses messy app config directory layout

opened 06:36PM - 03 Sep 26 UTC

p0358

Enhancement Request

### Problem to be solved I looked for Audacity's config files (since I had to w…ipe them to resolve issue #11258 for myself), noticing how they're laid out: ``` ❯ ls -l ~/.config/{Audacity,audacity,audacity4} /home/p0358/.config/audacity: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 8071 lip 17 01:15 audacity.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 52333 lip 16 23:54 pluginregistry.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 26 paź 4 2025 pluginsettings.cfg /home/p0358/.config/Audacity: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 805 sty 22 2026 Audacity4Development.ini -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 1739 wrz 3 20:01 Audacity4.ini /home/p0358/.config/audacity4: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 65821 sty 22 2026 pluginregistry.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 89 sty 22 2026 pluginsettings.cfg ``` There's now a duplicated `audacity` and `Audacity` folders in .config, respectively belonging to Audacity 3 and 4 versions. Furthermore, there's `audacity4` as well, further adding to the confusion. After wiping all of these and launching only Audacity 4 anew, we see: ``` ❯ ls -l ~/.config/{Audacity,audacity,audacity4} ls: cannot access '/home/p0358/.config/audacity': No such file or directory /home/p0358/.config/Audacity: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 664 wrz 3 20:17 Audacity4.ini /home/p0358/.config/audacity4: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 61440 wrz 3 20:16 audiocom_sync.db -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 89 wrz 3 20:16 pluginsettings.cfg ``` This means that for some reason, Audacity 4 splits its config files into two directories, even though Audacity 3 didn't do so, which I consider to be a regression (perhaps and oversight). ### Your idea For brevity and to avoid making a mess in config files, the app should put all its files in one directory, rather than splitting it into two. The capitalized folder name `Audacity` shouldn't be used at all, as it creates a confusion with lower-case `audacity` folder that might exist at the same time. **The simple and clean solution is to simply keep Audacity 3 files in its existing `~/.config/audacity`, while putting Audacity 4 files in `~/.config/audacity4` (both ini and cfg).** The config file `Audacity4.ini` should also be **lower-cased**, just like original `audacity.cfg` (it's really better to avoid capital letters in your config files, remember that Windows is the only system that defaults to case-agnostic filesystem, but on Linux and macOS `Audacity` and `audacity` are completely separate from each other, so not sticking to a convention can lead to issues later on). So basically you should probably make it look like this (for Audacity 3 and 4 respectively): ``` ❯ ls -l ~/.config/{audacity,audacity4} /home/p0358/.config/audacity: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 8071 lip 17 01:15 audacity.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 52333 lip 16 23:54 pluginregistry.cfg -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 26 paź 4 2025 pluginsettings.cfg /home/p0358/.config/audacity4: -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 664 wrz 3 20:17 audacity4.ini -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 61440 wrz 3 20:16 audiocom_sync.db -rw-r--r-- 1 p0358 p0358 89 wrz 3 20:16 pluginsettings.cfg ``` ### Prior art Audacity 3 simply stored its config files in `~/.config/audacity` and all file names were lower-case. ### Additional context Only Windows has case-agnostic filesystem. This mess should not be spread to other operating systems, as it's bound to cause problems down the line.