Audacity 2.2.2 Released! (How to Install / Upgrade)

Last updated: February 22, 2018

Audacity audio editor 2.2.2 was released two days ago with some improvements and several bug-fixes. Here’s how to install it in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, and Ubuntu 18.04.

Audacity 2.2.2 release highlights:

  • Easier zooming in and out with mousewheel, new Zoom Toggle command, and context menu for vertical rulers.
  • Easy access to change keyboard bindings of menu commands by holding Shift key
  • Detection of dropout errors while recording with overburdened CPU
  • Improved contrasts in Light and Dark themes
  • Half-wave display option
  • Several bugs/annoyances in 2.2.1 are now fixed
  • See Release Notes for details.

How to Install Audacity 2.2.2 in Ubuntu:

The Audacity team does not offer pre-compiled Linux binaries. Other than building from source, a third-party PPA is available with Audacity 2.2.2 packages for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 17.10, and Ubuntu 18.04.

1. Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for ‘terminal’ from app launcher. When it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity

Input your password (no visual feedback while typing) when it prompts and hit Enter to add the PPA.

audacity ppa

2. If you have a previous version installed, you can upgrade Audacity via Software Updater after adding the PPA.

upgrade audacity

or run following commands one by one to check updates and install (or upgrade) audacity 2.2:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install audacity

Uninstall:

To remove the PPA repository, launch Software & Updates utility and navigate to ‘Other Software’ tab.

To remove Audacity audio software, either use system package manager or run command in terminal:

sudo apt-get remove --autoremove audacity audacity-data

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I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via [email protected] Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1 |

6 responses to Audacity 2.2.2 Released! (How to Install / Upgrade)

  1. Amiga Ireland May 2, 2018 at 10:43 am

    Thanks for this. Audacity in 16.04 has a bug on export dialog where the the .aiff extension as always default on the end ogg and wav files instead of .ogg and .wav. It’s fixed in the newest version and it’s a much better experience!

  2. Thanks Ji m,
    Works perfectly in Linux Mint 18.1 :)

  3. You shouldn’t be distributing v. 2.3.0 if the developers say it’s too buggy and not recommended for Linux! They have completely removed it from their site.

    The latest stable version for Linux is 2.2.2 which is now not available in any PPA for Ubuntu 18.04. The standard repos only have 2.2.1-1 which has this bug — https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=99026 — and 2.3.0 has multiple problems according to this thread: https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=101669

  4. Thanks Ji m: I uninstalled the existing 2.2.1-1 and installed 2.2.2 per your instructions, but the program froze again on the first attempt to export multiple tracks. I followed the instructions to upgrade, but ultimately came up with the comment that the current version was up to date. The system froze again on exporting multiple. Not sure what’s happening as the documentation on Audacity seems to say they fixed the bug with exporting.

  5. Fixed: Others may know this already, but exporting multiple “tracks” is wrong and will freeze the program when there’s one continuous stereo track with several songs broken by labels. Export instead by “label.” (I suppose this post should be on an Audacity forum, but I wanted to add to my prior post.) Thanks again.