Recovering audio help

I use audacity with an iMac and it recently crashed right near the end of a project. Like an idiot, I didn’t save. I’m having trouble following online tutorials on how to manually recover my audio. When I open the file it says some audio is missing and I only have three options on what to do next: close the file, temporarily silence the audio it’s having trouble with or permanently silence the audio. I can’t figure out how to fix this and I’m not sure if the recording is gone for forever or not. What can I do to fix this or am I boned?

2.4.2 audacity version operation system is Catalina. I saw another post asking a similar question to mine but it was never resolved

Manual recovery was an option in the old days when automatic recovery wasn’t very good. During the development of Audacity 2.x, automatic recovery was improved to the point where “if the project is recoverable, automatic recovery will succeed”. If Audacity 2.4.2 can’t automatically recover an Audacity 2.x project, then it is unlikely that the project can be recovered.



  • If you select “permanently silence the audio”, then that’s the end of the line and whatever state the project is in (it probably has silent tracks) is all you can get.
  • “Temporarily silence the audio”. This option allows you to view the project to see how much of the project Audacity can recover. In some cases there may be just one silent clip with the rest of the project OK, in which case it’s probably best to cut your losses, accept the project as it is and at least most of the project is OK. Once you save the project, that is the end of the line - nothing more can be recovered after saving.
  • “Close the file” is the default option. It does nothing other than closing the project.

Try the “Temporarily silence the audio” option (DO NOT SAVE).
How bad is the damage?

Temporarily silencing leaves the entire project silent. But I was adding audio to an already recorded file before the crash so it would make sense that the audio missing is the files that I added, which aren’t showing up on the original project anymore. But I doubt adding them back will magically fix the recorded audio from its flat line back to what it was. Womp :frowning: