Administrator approval

[Gale Andrews]

How to Run an App as Administrator in Windows 10
Here is from that page:

By default, any time you run anything as administrator (elevated), you will get a UAC prompt for approval first. This will not bypass it.

I have not tested in Windows 10, but in previous Windows, running an app as Adminstrator when logged in as standard user did not allow you save or export from that app to Program Files. No User Account Control (UAC) prompt is offered, you are just invited to save in your Documents folder instead.


Gale

[Robert2]

I log into Windows 10 as Administrator. But even then, I cannot export or save automatically to the protected system folders. I can do it manually, but I have to show credentials before I am allowed to go ahead. In many ways, the final Administrator in Windows 10 is the Windows system itself. And when all is said and done, there is no practical reason why we should try to save or export automatically to folders that are out-of-bounds.

[Gale Andrews]

I log into Windows 10 as Administrator. But even then, I cannot export or save automatically to the protected system folders. I can do it manually, but I have to show credentials before I am allowed to go ahead.

Or as an experienced user and if you have good security in place and don't browse risky sites, you can turn UAC off. Or enable the hidden (elevated) Administrator and log in as that (not recommended, and if you do that you are then prevented from launching "modern" apps in most cases).

There is no practical reason why we should try to save or export automatically to folders that are out-of-bounds.

Except that Audacity often defaults to presenting you with its installation directory to save or export to, and users may not notice.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

Except that Audacity often defaults to presenting you with its installation directory to save or export to, and users may not notice.

Is there any way we can fix that Gale? Should we be raising it on Bugzilla?

Peter

[Robert2]

Although I am not an audacity developer, I second this. Audacity should not default to presenting end-users with its installation directory to save or export to. This is non-standard. Installation folders are out-of-bounds for all applications when it comes to saving user output. This has been the case since at least Windows 7.

Disabling UAC is ill-advised. Here is from How to turn off and disable UAC in Windows 10:

Personally I always keep UAC enabled and do not recommend you to disable it. Having UAC enabled is additional protection from dangerous apps and viruses which can elevate silently if it is disabled and do anything malicious on your PC.

[Gale Andrews]

Although I am not an audacity developer, I second this. Audacity should not default to presenting end-users with its installation directory to save or export to. This is non-standard. Installation folders are out-of-bounds for all applications when it comes to saving user output.

I would not say Audacity is unique in that (and it happens to Audacity on Mac too). Audacity does not specify starting directory for export or save project, so (on Windows and Mac) wxWidgets starts in the current directory. On Linux I believe wxGTK uses a system "recent directories" list instead.

Once the user changes the directory and successfully exports, the export path is saved in audacity.cfg. The save project path is not saved by Audacity at all, but Windows itself saves the save project path in the Registry. So on Windows the problem with Save Project opening in Program Files should only occur on very first Audacity installation, but the problem with Export opening in Program Files would recur every time you reset Preferences.

I'm sure we already recorded Feature Request "votes" that there should be separate preferences for the Export and Save directories and so we would specify a default starting directory for each. It probably isn't on Bugzilla, but I have not looked.

Of course, if a user was logged in as admin and saved a project to Program Files, then later logged in as a standard user, there would be a problem, because Audacity does not show message box errors when it cannot read or write files (that is on Bugzilla).

Disabling UAC is ill-advised. Here is from How to turn off and disable UAC in Windows 10:

Personally I always keep UAC enabled and do not recommend you to disable it. Having UAC enabled is additional protection from dangerous apps and viruses which can elevate silently if it is disabled and do anything malicious on your PC.

Correct for general users.

For practical purposes as an Audacity tester/QA person I would be hugely slowed down if I had UAC enabled. With good security and sensible behaviour (don't browse dangerous sites, download cracked programs or open suspicious e-mails) dangerous apps should not get on your computer in most cases. And compared to Windows 7, Windows 10 has better built-in security prior to anti-virus to prevent nasty apps misbehaving.


Gale

[Robert2]

From my own experience of Windows 10, most applications now automatically export/save to the Windows dedicated User “Libraries”, i.e. “Downloads”, “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Music”, and “Videos”.

I just tried to export audio from Audacity. Audacity automatically offered to export to the Audacity install folder in Program Files. I tried just that. I immediately got a message from Windows warning me that I was not allowed to save files to that folder. I needed to ask my Administrator. Did I want to save to the Administrator User Account instead? When I clicked “Yes”, I got an offer where the “Music” Library was the obvious choice. It would be preferable if Audacity offered to export to that Library by default. In any case, the files can be moved to other places later. I personally save first to my “Music” Library which is on a SSD. This speeds things up a lot. When I am done recording and saving I move the saved audio to appropriate subfolders in “E:\Musics” for storage. “E:\Musics” is on a much slower old-time standard hard drive…

[waxcylinder]

From my own experience of Windows 10, most applications now automatically export/save to the Windows dedicated User “Libraries”, i.e. “Downloads”, “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Music”, and “Videos”.

I'd like to see Audacity default to the Windows "Music" folder - that seems eminently more sensible than allowing it to try and stomp on a "Program Files" location.

Peter

[Gale Andrews]

From my own experience of Windows 10, most applications now automatically export/save to the Windows dedicated User “Libraries”, i.e. “Downloads”, “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Music”, and “Videos”.

I'd like to see Audacity default to the Windows "Music" folder - that seems eminently more sensible than allowing it to try and stomp on a "Program Files" location.

I believe you already "voted", but Robert2 had not. Correct me if I'm wrong.


Gale

[waxcylinder]

I believe you already "voted", but Robert2 had not. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I honestly can't remember Gale - but as the Irish are fond of saying: "Vote early, vote often ... "

Is there a Bugzilla enhancement request for this?

Peter.