Making a Time Selection In Reaper

If you want to make a time selection in Reaper, you may have discovered that you end up moving audio around on the tracks instead. This can be really frustrating. It is not intuitive. You can do it if you don't hover your cursor over the tracks, picking a spot above or below or even between the tracks. Otherwise all that happens is stuff moves left or right in the tracks.

So here is a way to allow you to select a section of your project with the cursor over your a track or audio item, and still be able to move the audio around on the track the same way as before. It's easy to add a mouse-modifier so that all you have to do is hold down a keyboard combo while dragging. This should make things easier and more clear, and cause less swearing :-). Or at least less frustration.

[TarkBike]

Thank you very much! It was very confusing to not find this behavior in Reaper by default. I worked in quite a few audio editors and they all have it out of the box, so it's natural to expect it here

[scottjones]

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record (you remember records, right? - lol), but your videos are so clean. Your use of the red arrows and boxes are just brilliant. Why doesn't everybody do this? You never move too quickly, you ennunciate, there is no clutter or throbbing background music. Pro!

[darconp]

Hello and thank you very much for making this video. I have two observations If you allow me .

1-Using the left-click you can make a time selection over an item if you position the mouse over the title-bar of the item.
2-By default you can make a time selection anywhere in the item if you "right-click drag" while holding the "Ctrl" key.

I'm new to reaper and as you mentioned, this got me really lost. I had to do some online research to find this info. Being that said, I just learned something new in your video by creating the shortcut on the "Mouse Modifier" setting. Thank you and keep up the good work and quality content. Best,

Reaper v7.09_Windows 10 64Bits

[jackiebowker]

Thank you so much for this!! I'm changing over to Reaper and your video has saved me a lot of accidental track moves haha

[bobbydolan]

Was getting very frustrated. Thanks for this time saving video.

[sunniandlovely]

Thank you! Your videos are extremely helpful. You just gained a new subscriber 🙌🏾

[ladripper]

You forgot to add one detail! The locking feature. I fought for days in different forums and videos and none mentioned it but then I finally saw in one forum someone was talking about a "lock" so I clicked that and was finally able to make a selection again

[leskanekuni]

This didn't work for me on a Mac.