Audacity 2.2.0 is a new major version of the popular cross-platform open source audio editing software that comes with pre-installed themes and more.

The new version of Audacity can be downloaded from the project website for all supported operating systems. Windows users can download a portable version or setup version of Audacity 2.2.0, existing users may select Help > Check for updates from within the program interface instead to start the update process.

New users may want to download some of the available plugins, Lame MP3 encoder for instance, to improve the functionality of the audio editor.

Audacity 2.2.0

Audacity 2.2.0 comes with a new logo and includes four themes that users of the software can switch between. You can check out the four themes under Edit > Preferences > Interface > Theme.

Available for selection are a light theme (default), as well as dark, high contrast, classic and custom themes. The custom theme is identical to the classic theme, but users may create their own theme template based on it. Instructions on how to do so are available on the Audacity wiki site.

The selected theme is applied automatically after you exit the preferences window.

Audacity 2.2.0 features additional usability improvements

- Menus have been reorganized. The team notes that it has simplified menus without removing functionality, for instance by moving functions that are used more often to the top levels of the menus. New menu options, for exporting as MP3 or WAV, have been added on top of that. This speeds up the process of exporting audio.
- Two new menus are available but not displayed by default. You can turn on the Extended Menu Bar and the Extended Command menu under View > Extra Menus (on/off), or under Edit > Preferences > Interface > Extra Menus.
- Help button added to different locations in the user interface.
- Number of preset shortcuts has been reduced. Users can enable the full set under Edit > Preferences > Keyboard > Defaults
- New "clips" keyboard commands. Audacity users may use new commands such as going to the next or previous clip. These are available under Transport and Select in the menu.
- Selection toolbar features four settings in the selection menu.

Additionally, Audacity 2.2.0 supports the importing of MIDI and Allegro files into Note Tracks. The developers note that this should work on Windows out of the box, and that Linux and Mac users may require additional software for that as described here.

The full release notes of Audacity 2.2.0 list additional changes that have not been mentioned in this review.