Audacity Forum

We've deployed Audacity 1.2.6 on our school labs and I was wondering is there a way to define a default set of preferences for users? Right now, every time a user logs in for the first time, they must setup Audacity's language, inputs, and mp3 export library settings. It's very time consuming in a lab environment to get everyone setup with the same defaults. And then when a new set of students come in, it repeats all over again.

It would be nice if there was a way to set a global config that provides defaults for everyone out the gate, and then they could still customize their settings more afterwards. But I cannot seem to find this type of functionality. It looks like 1.3.x series can probably do this, sort-of with the "portable app" folder configuration file. But I'm wondering if there is a way to provide this for the 1.2.6 stable release?

Thank you.

1.2.x uses the Windows Registry to store it's preferences - so it may be difficult.

In 1.3.x (and presumably therefore in the upcoming 1.4) the is an audacity.cfg configuration file stored in C:Documents and Settings<user_name>Application DataAudacity - so you may be able to copy this to all created accounts when you transion to 1.3 or 1.4

WC

waxcylinder wrote:In 1.3.x (and presumably therefore in the upcoming 1.4) the is an audacity.cfg configuration file stored in C:Documents and Settings<user_name>Application DataAudacity - so you may be able to copy this to all created accounts

Yes that will work, and is probably the best way to do it.

An alternative way is to create a directory called "Portable Settings" in the same directory as the Audacity executable. "audacity.cfg" will be stored there instead of in Settings<user_name>Application DataAudacity

The disadvantage of this second method is that if one person messes up the config file, it is messed up for all users (though keeping a backup copy of the correct config file would make it very quick and easy to restore).

(Note: this 2nd method is also for Audacity 1.3 and later)