Ubuntu

Install Audacity Audio Editor in Ubuntu 20.04

Audacity is a free-to-use and open-source audio editor. It is one of the most-used multi-track audio editing programs available for Windows, macOS, and Linux operating systems. Audacity is used to record, cut, splice, and apply various effects to recorded audio. This article shows you how to install Audacity onto your Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system.

Installation

The latest version of Audacity on its official website is 2.4.2. There are two ways to install the latest version of Audacity in Ubuntu 20.04:

  • Install Audacity via PPA
  • Install Audacity via Snap Store

First, we will install Audacity using the PPA method.

Install Audacity via PPA

You can install Audacity on your Ubuntu system by adding the unofficial PPA created by “ubuntuhandbook” to your Ubuntu system’s software sources by issuing the following command in the terminal.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity

You will be asked to press Enter to continue adding the Audacity package to the sources list. Hit Enter to begin the process of adding PPA to the sources list.

After adding the Audacity package to your system’s software sources, update the package repository to install Audacity.

$ sudo apt update

Once you have updated the package repository, Audacity should be installed successfully.

Navigate to Activities and search for ‘audacity.’

As you can see in the screenshot, Audacity is now installed on my system and ready to use.

Uninstall Audacity from Ubuntu 20.04

If you want to uninstall Audacity for some reason, you can do so by issuing the apt remove command with the –autoremove flag, as follows:

$ sudo apt remove --autoremove audacity audacity-data

As you can see, Audacity has been removed successfully from my Ubuntu 20.04 system.

Install Audacity via Snap Store

Audacity is also available from the Snap store. Using a Snap is one of the easiest ways to install any application because it considers all the updates and dependencies of the application. To install Audacity using Snap, first, make sure that you have Snap installed on your Ubuntu system. Snap comes installed by default in the latest versions of Ubuntu. If Snap is not installed in your system, install it via the commands below.

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt install snapd

After successfully installing Snap, you are now ready to install Audacity using the simple command given below:

$ sudo snap install audacity

It will take a couple of minutes to download and install Audacity.

Once Audacity has been installed via Snap, run the Audacity application by searching for the term ‘audacity’ in the Application menu.

Click the Audacity icon to open Audacity.

Conclusion

This article covered two different methods of installing the Audacity audio editor in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Installing Audacity via the PPA is recommended by Audacity’s official website, although it is an unofficial PPA mentioned by ubuntu handbook’s website. You may also use the Snap method to install Audacity by running only a single command in the terminal.

About the author

Shehroz Azam

A Javascript Developer & Linux enthusiast with 4 years of industrial experience and proven know-how to combine creative and usability viewpoints resulting in world-class web applications. I have experience working with Vue, React & Node.js & currently working on article writing and video creation.