Hopefully my question hasn’t been asked and answered a dozen times already, but I have searched thoroughly.
The way that the cursor keys work when selecting audio just seems wrong to me. I assume that it’s just the way it works, but I am hoping that there is an option to help me.
I can use the cursor keys to select a position in the audio, let’s call that the anchor. At that point I can hold the shift key and press the left or right arrow key. That will create a selection with one end being held down by the anchor. I would then believe that if I continued to hold the shift key, but used the other arrow key that my selection would get smaller. With Audacity, however, that serves to move the anchor so the selection size can only get bigger. I would expect it to work the same way it does in Word or Notepad, but it doesn’t.
It can’t be changed unless you want to change and recompile the Audacity code.
If you hold SHIFT, use RIGHT arrow to extend the selection rightwards, go too far then wish to contract from the right, you have to keep holding SHIFT, hold CTRL then use the opposite arrow (LEFT in this case).
I think SHIFT then LEFT or RIGHT extends the relevant edge is reasonable for an audio selection (as opposed to having an anchor as in a text selection). CoolEdit seems to work with an anchor point that cannot be moved and I do not like it.
I’ve argued before that having to use the opposite arrow key with CTRL to contract is awkward and counter-intuitive (however it means the direction of movement controlled by the arrow remains the same).
Do you want to cast a vote for an option to use the anchor method, or to be able to use CTRL, SHIFT and the same arrow key to reverse the movement of an edge? Casting a vote doesn’t mean anything will necessarily change but we do take popularity of requests into account.