Many editing operations in Ardour require to first select one or more regions to change them in some way. A single region, or multiple regions can be selected, including regions in different tracks. When a region is selected, it will appear in a darker color than unselected regions.

If a track is a member of a group that is active and has the Select property enabled, then Ardour will attempt to match whatever selections is made in one track across every other track of the group. See Corresponding Regions Selection for more information on precisely how selections will be propagated to other tracks.

Track Selection

Tracks are selected by clicking on the Track header at the left of the Editor window. Multiple tracks can be selected with Left clicks, or a range of consecutive tracks with Left.

Region Selection

Using the Grab Mode tool, left clicking on a region selects it. If Smart mode is enabled, the lower half of the region must be clicked.

Deselecting a Region

Still using the Grab Mode tool, Left-clicking the region deselects it. If Smart mode is enabled, the lower half of the region must be clicked.

Note that a left click simply toggles the selected status of an object, so it can be used to select unselected regions too.

Selecting Multiple Regions in a Track

This can be achieved in different ways:

• Left-clicking each region.
• Dragging a rubberband box from an empty point in a track before the first region to select to a point within or after the last region to select. Using left-drag allows doing it multiple times.
• If the regions are all adjacent to one another, clicking the first region to select, then Left-clicking the last one.

Selecting All Regions in a Track

The Select > Select All In Track option in the context menu (Right click on the track) selects all the regions in the track at once.

See the Track Context Menu for more information on other per-track selection operations that are available.

Selecting Multiple Regions Across Different Tracks

This can be achieved by a left-click or Left-click on the regions to select.

Selecting a Region From the Region List

Clicking the name of the region in the Region List. selects it. This will do nothing for whole-file regions, since they do not exist anywhere in a playlist or track.