How to install Audacity on Ubuntu 20.04

Audacity is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application. Its an cross platform application available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, and Unix-like operating systems.

One of the major advantages of Audacity is that the interface of Audacity is user-friendly and simple and I highly recommend this application because of the great sound quality.

Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from other media. In addition to recording audio from more than one sources, Audacity can be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including effects such as trimming, normalization, and fading in and out.

Audacity is distributed under the GNU GPL V2 license and in addition to English, Audacity is available in 38 languages.

Key Features of Audacity

• Free and Open-Source
• Cross Platform application
• Import, edit, and combine sound files. Export your recordings in many different file formats, including multiple files at once.
• Record live sound and audio playback
• Sound Qualiy: Audacity supports 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit.
• Available in 38 languages
• Noise Removal
• Large range of keyboard shortcuts.
• Supports various audio formats including MP2, MP3, AIFF, WAV, FLAC.
• Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard.
• Support for LADSPA, LV2, Nyquist, VST and Audio Unit effect plug-ins. Even you can write your own plug-in.
• Take different sound documents and duplicate, cut, blend, or graft them together.
• Many more…

System Requirements:

• Latest version of GNU/Linux from your distribution that is compatible with your hardware specifications.
• At least 1GB RAM and a 2 GHz processor.

This article explains three methods of installing Audacity on Ubuntu 20.04.

Choose the installation method that is most appropriate for your environment.

Method 1: Installing Audacity as a Snap Package

The easiest way to install Audacity on Ubuntu 20.04 is by using the snap packaging system.

A snap package is a type of universal Linux package that you can enjoy irrespective of the distro. Its an self-contained software packages that include the binary all dependencies needed to run the application.

All you need is the snap service pre-configured, In the case of Ubuntu 20.04, it comes with snap pre-installed.

If snapd package is not already installed then you can install it by running following command.

$ sudo apt install snapd

Note: Snap packages can be installed from either the command-line or via the Ubuntu Software application.

This is actually the Snap version of the Audacity. It can be used on any Linux distribution that has Snap support.

Open your terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type the following command to install the Audacity package.

$ sudo snap install audacity

At this step, you have successfully installed Audacity application on Ubuntu 20.04 system.

If you are not comfortable with the command line, open Ubuntu Software, search for “Audacity” and install the application.

Type the following command to update Audacity package.

$ sudo snap refresh --list

Method 2: Installing Audacity via PPA Repository

If you want to install the most recent version of Audacity, you can use the PPA repository.

Personal Package Archives (PPA) are software repositories designed for Ubuntu users and are easier to install than other third-party repositories. PPAs are often used to distribute pre-release software so that it can be tested.

Step #1

First of all open the terminal from system application launcher and type the following command to add the Audacity PPA to your system.

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

Step #2

Then, execute the following commands to install Audacity package on your Ubuntu system.

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install audacity

Once installed, launch it from your system application menu.

Method 3: Installing Audacity via AppImage

Before installation let’s understand what is AppImage.

What is AppImage?

We have .deb packages for Debian/Ubuntu based Linux distributions and .rpm for Fedora/SUSE based Linux distributions.

While these packages provide a convenient way of installing software to their respective distribution users, it is not the most convenient for the application developer.

The developers have to create multiple packages for multiple distributions. This is where AppImage comes into picture. AppImage is a universal software package format.

By packaging the software in AppImage, the developer provides just one file to rule them all. End user can use it in most modern Linux distributions.

Step #1

Click on following button to download the latest stable version of Audacity AppImage executable file for Linux.

Step #2

The downloaded file name would be something like: audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage

By default, the downloaded AppImage file won’t have the execution permission. You will have to change the permission on the file to make it executable and You don’t need root privilege to do that.

Now type the following command to make the AppImage executable.

$ chmod u+x audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage

Step #3

Once you have made the AppImage file executable, just double click on it to run it Or run the following command to install through terminal.

$ ./audacity-linux-3.1.2-x86_64.AppImage

That’s It.

Starting Audacity

In the Activities search bar type “Audacity” and click on the icon to launch the application.

Audacity User Interface:

How to Uninstall Audacity from Ubuntu 20.04

For some reason, If you want to uninstall Audacity application, refer following methods.

Method #1

If you have installed Audacity via Snap type the following command:

$ sudo snap remove audacity

Method #2

If you have installed the appication via PPA then uninstall by running the below commands.

Step #1

It’s most likely that you added the PPA using add-apt-repository command. You can use the same command to remove the PPA as well. Just give it --remove option in the command.

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

Step #2

As of now we removed the PPA. What about the applications installed using these PPAs? Will they be removed as a result of removing the PPA? The answer is NO.

So this is when ppa-purge comes in picture. It not only disables the PPA but also uninstalls all the programs installed by the PPA or revert them to original version provided by your distribution.

So type the following command to install the ppa-purge package and uninstall the Audacity package.

$ sudo apt install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/audacity

Method #3

If you have installed Audacity via AppImage:

Since the software is never installed, there is no need of uninstalling it. Just delete the associated AppImage file and your software is removed from the system.

Conclusion

I hope that now you have a good understanding of How to install Audacity on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

If anyone does have any questions about what we covered in this guide then feel free to ask in the comment section below and I will do my best to answer those.