Where Does Audacity Store Its Config and Autosave Data?
Audacity's config folder on Windows, macOS and Linux, where preferences, plugins and crash recovery data live in version 3.
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Every Audacity setting lives in one per-user folder: preferences in audacity.cfg, plugin registrations in pluginregistry.cfg, and your saved effect settings in pluginsettings.cfg. None of it sits in the program folder, so an upgrade or a reinstall leaves it alone.
The folder itself is called audacity on all three desktop platforms, but the parent directory follows each OS's own convention. These paths describe Audacity 3.x, which is the current stable line. Audacity 4 exists only as an alpha, so if you are running it, trust Preferences > Directories over anything written down.
Recovery data for whatever project you have open lives somewhere else, in a temp folder that is easier to clear than to find. The notes below and the FAQ cover where that goes on each platform.
Where Audacity stores this, by platform
C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Roaming\audacity\
Holds audacity.cfg with every preference, pluginregistry.cfg and pluginsettings.cfg for plugin registrations and your last-used effect settings, plus a Plug-Ins folder for VST and LADSPA plugins you drop in yourself. Crash recovery data for the open project is written to C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\Audacity\SessionData instead. Both locations are shown in Preferences > Directories.
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/
The same three config files plus a Plug-Ins subfolder. Finder hides Library, so use Go > Go to Folder and paste the path, or read it straight out of Preferences > Directories. Recovery session data for the current project sits in a SessionData subfolder of this same directory on Mac.
~/.config/audacity/
Follows the XDG layout: config in ~/.config/audacity, caches in ~/.cache/audacity, data in ~/.local/share/audacity and state in ~/.local/state/audacity. A leftover ~/.audacity-data folder from Audacity 2.x takes priority if it exists. Session data defaults to /var/tmp/audacity-[username]. Flatpak and Snap builds redirect all of this into their own sandbox.
Frequently asked questions
Where does Audacity keep autosave and recovery data?
Not the config folder. Version 3.x stores autosave entries inside the project file itself and writes recovery data to a SessionData folder: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Audacity\SessionData on Windows, a SessionData subfolder of the support directory on Mac, and /var/tmp/audacity-[username] on Linux by default.
How do I reset Audacity to default settings?
Close Audacity and rename audacity.cfg, then start it again; a clean config is rebuilt on launch. Tools > Reset Configuration does the same job from inside the app. Renaming the whole folder also clears plugin registrations and any saved effect presets, so keep the old copy until you are sure.
Where are Audacity plugins installed?
Audacity's own plug-in folder is the Plug-Ins subfolder of the config folder on Windows, Mac and Linux. System-wide VST2, VST3, LV2 and Vamp plugins use the OS defaults, such as C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 on Windows. New plugins appear after a restart or an Add / Remove Plugins rescan.
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