Pressing delete when there is no range selection deletes the track

Audacity 4
1

Try this:

  • Create a project and create a track with some audio in it
  • Click somewhere in the audio
  • Press the delete key

The track is deleted.

Is this what you expect to happen?

AU3 would throw an “Audacity says no” dialog advising the user to select some audio first.

1 Like
2

I see that 22 folks have viewed this topic.

I’m kinda asking for a poll here. The folks at Muse think this is logical, since the track has keyboard focus.

What do you think? Will this freak users out when their track suddenly goes away? Is it perfectly logical and OK?

Background

Many, many years ago there was a debate among the Audacity Team members about what to do when a user takes an action that requires a selection (such as pressing the delete key or applying an effect). Audacity would put up a dialog pointing out that a selection was required. This was seen as annoying, so instead Audacity would do a “Select all”, then carry out the action. The upshot was that a user could accidentally delete their entire project, which was eventually seen as worse than the annoyance of the “Audacity says no” dialog. The compromise was the preference that now exists in Audacity 3: “Select all audio, if selection required”, which defaults to OFF IIRC.

I’m not advocating for bringing back that preference, but I think deleting a track as noted in my first post is a bad thing.