MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) introduces additional restrictions on running non-Apple software. These restrictions prevent Audacity from functioning correctly, and may conflict with Audacity’s open source license (yet to be confirmed).

If you are currently using Audacity on an older version of macOS and wish to continue using Audacity, we recommend that you don’t update to Catalina yet.

Although Catalina is not officially supported, there’s a workaround that has been reported to work for some (but not all) users with Catalina and Audacity 2.3.2:

1. On your computer, go to "Applications" and then "Utilities"
2. Launch the "Terminal" app
3. In the Terminal window, copy and paste the following text:
   open /Applications/Audacity.app/Contents/MacOS/Audacity

4. Hit the "Enter" key on your keyboard

5. Open the "Audacity" app
6. Confirm the request for microphone permissions when requested.