'Rogue' files created/visible each time Audacity is opened

I’m running the latest version of Audacity and as soon as it is opened I get three files created immediately in the Audacity folder with the current date and timestamp. These appear before any actions are taken such as importing a file etc.

When I close Audacity the files self delete.

Another install of Audacity on a different PC does not do this. The Audacity folder remains empty until such time as the project is saved.

I am running W11 Dev Builds and suspect these might be legitimate files but that should not be visible. The size of the files seems the same each time and only increases in size when I start recording for example.

Also when the files self delete on closing Audacity, File Explorer shows ‘Working on it’ until I do a refresh when it then reports ‘Folder Empty’

First question: What is the problem about these files? As you may see from the filetype, they contain the session data of a so far unsaved session. As soon as the session is saved (or Audacity is closed without any work done) they will disappear.

Second: These files appear probably also on the other computer where you did not see them - but in a different place.

You can define where they should be in the settings for Audacity, see the attached images.

Christian

Thanks for looking at this Christian, and to answer your first question… well the only ‘problem’ is really not knowing why they suddenly appeared never having seen this behaviour before.

My copy of Audacity has been updated only a few times since my last clean Windows install.

You might be on to something with the location of these files. This PC has them directed to the Audacity folder created by Audacity during installation. I will be able to look at the other PC later on today to see if that one is any different.

Operationally they cause no issue, I’m just puzzled over them more than anything.

In a standard Windows 10 installation of Audacity, these files should appear in
C:\Users[yourusername]\AppData\Local\Audacity\SessionData
and not in your Documents folder.

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See Managing Audacity Projects - Audacity Manual

"In addition to the single database project file the database also creates two temporary work files WAL & SHM files. For example My-Project.aup3-wal and My-Project.aup3-shm.

These are deleted on closure of the project or on exit from Audacity."

When you open an existing project, or save a new project while working on it, these two files are created in the same folder as the project. So you would be able to see them.
When you create a new project a temporary project is created in a place not normally visible.

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Well it seems it is just the target directory that is the cause of this.

I checked the other install and that is set to ‘AppData > Local’ etc and sure enough the same files are created on that set up as soon as Audacity is opened.

Although I don’t remember altering that anytime I can only conclude I must have done at some point. I can’t see how else it could have occurred. So user error… doh!

Thanks for the help though, it has enabled me to ‘fix’ this.

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