Is there a way to make this (not) happen? I’ve Googled, searched the wiki/faq, everything. I registered specifically to ask this question. It’s really frustrating when you’re zoomed in really tight, listening during playback for a specific instant to occur, only to have the waveform at the location you’re trying to scrutinize jump away suddenly. I’m cross-posting this in Mac and Linux help subforums because A) This is not a platform-specific issue, and I think all platform users could benefit from an answer to this, if there is one, and B) I use Audacity on multiple platforms, anyway.
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Please don’t cross-post. It drives us crazy. Go back and delete all the crosses.
Audacity > Preferences > Tracks > [ ] Update Display… (de-select).
Koz
Thanks, by the way, worked like a charm!
Also, making inferences from your reply, I was able to find the equivalent solution for Audacity 1.2.6 (on my other, older windows XP machine) Edit–>Preferences–>deselect “autoscroll while playing” …Just in case anyone might find that useful.
Why don’t you become an active member of the forum community? That way you can snag people having all sorts of problems on the all the platforms you’re familiar with.
Koz
Thanks, I will do. 
Also, it looks like my cross-posts didn’t get past approval, so do I still need to do anything or is the problem solved?
There are no posts left to delete.
What annoys me and others if you don’t uncheck that Preference is that when you press Stop then Play again, the editing cursor moves to the left edge of the screen (and you have to press Play to get to see that cursor again). This is logged as an issue we should fix. I think few people want to see where they stopped.
What works for me now after pressing Stop is to use left arrow on the keyboard. This shows you the editing cursor, centred in the window, so you still have the context surrounding the cursor point that you had before you pressed Play.
Gale
The problem with multiple posts is multiple answers, particularly contradictory ones.
“Hold down the Shift key. No, Don’t hold down the Shift key.”
We would have condensed your postings to one place anyway. This is a forum, not a help desk and the process needs to be as fast and efficient as possible. Multiple postings are neither.
I’m with you. I don’t particularly like the view shifting out from under me while I’m zoomed in. I do like it when the recording view shifts during recording. That’s a very graphic and obvious indication that I’m doing useful work. It might be suggested that the title of the setting is wrong. It’s not “Update While Playing.”
Koz