When i’m playing a track, my purpose is to listen, to find out where to cut it. I press stop. And then the bar is gone, the play bar, the hair-line with the green arrow as a hat. So I don’t know where to clip. I have to “eyeball” where I THINK that I pressed stop 
And that’s just weird. In the other A program which I used… the play bar stays solid, even when paused or stopped, and then I can split my track precisely.
How do YOU cut a track precisely? Please share YOUR procedure. Thanking you.
sorry I pressed PAUSE and the play bar stayed. I’m used to using the space key, which is the stop button, for precise stoppage.
Aside from user error on my part, I would appreciate advice if there be a better/other way.
In kindness, KA 
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Personally, I use Ctrl-M to mark all of my points of interest. I can go back in later and zoom in if I want to.
You can use the “X” shortcut - which is “Stop and Set Cursor”
See this page in the Manual:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/playback.html
where it says:
"Alternatively, use X or Transport > Playing > Play/Stop and Set Cursor to stop playback and set the cursor there. Playback will resume from the stop point on pressing Play. "
Peter.
I looked at that page in the Manual and decided to tweak that for the alpha Manual for the upcoming 3.2.0 release to put a little more focus on Stop and Set Cursor:
https://alphamanual.audacityteam.org/man/Playback#Play_button
Peter
Hi Peter, thank you for that, I do need to read the manual. My alternative A audio program crashed and I have a deadline so I’m jumping in.
I press “X” and the play stops and it took me several attempts to realize that the gray bar (which may or may be a looping bar) indicates where the play stopped at. And then manually set the cursor line where the gray line starts so I can zoom in on it Is that about right or is there an different way? No need to reply if I’m working it the way it was designed for.
Kindly, KA
The gray bar is not a looping bar or Loop-region - it should be the same as tour selection and indicates the Play-region.
If you start playing with a selection active then play will start from the beginning of the selection.
If you then press X then
a) play will stop
b) the selection will be reduced to be from your stop point to the end of the selection.
A Loop region is shown in blue on the Timeline and is only active when the Loop button is pressed.
Just take care if you have looping activated as that is a state change for the Play (and Play-at-Speed) buttons and can lead to some somewhat odd playback behaviors (these behaviors are a design choice made by the designers and developers at Muse)/.
See this GitHub issue I raised today for some further insights into these playback behaviors when looping is active:
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/2796
Peter.