Downloading Praat for Linux

Downloading Praat for Linux

1. Downloading the Linux edition

The most straightforward way to obtain the newest version of the Linux edition of Praat is to download Praat from this page. Click on the appropriate compressed archive:

normal edition (for interactive work as well as scripting):
- for Intel64/AMD64/x64: praat6426_linux-intel64.tar.gz (8 January 2025; 26.0 MB) <-- you probably want this
- for ARM64/AArch64: praat6426_linux-arm64.tar.gz (8 January 2025; 24.9 MB)
- for s390x: praat6426_linux-s390x.tar.gz (8 January 2025; 25.8 MB)

barren server edition (no GUI, no network, no sound, no graphics):
- for Intel64/AMD64/x64: praat6426_linux-intel64-barren.tar.gz (8 January 2025; 27.1 MB)
- for ARM64/AArch64: praat6426_linux-arm64-barren.tar.gz (8 January 2025; 25.4 MB)
- for s390x: praat6426_linux-s390x-barren.tar.gz (8 January 2025; 26.1 MB)

Unpack with gunzip and tar xvf. This will create the executable file praat. You can remove the tar file.

You could also simply do sudo apt install praat if you are on Ubuntu, although you may obtain a years-old version. Or you may get Praat from Debian, or compile it yourself (64-bit or 32-bit) from the source code.

2. How to start

Praat will work fine wherever it is on your disk; just type ./praat into a terminal window.

If Praat doesn’t start immediately (i.e. it may complain about missing .so files), then you may have to install one or more standard (system or audio) libraries on which Praat depends:

   sudo apt install libc++1      # the C++ standard library
   sudo apt install libgtk-3-0   # the graphics toolkit
   sudo apt install libpulse0    # the Pulse audio server
   sudo apt install libasound2   # the ALSA audio library
   sudo apt install libjack0     # the Jack audio library
   sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module     # needed only if your system complains about missing this

or click the icon. If you use Praat for the first time, choose Intro from the Help menu.

3. Phonetic symbols

If you want to see good phonetic characters, you have to install the Charis SIL and Doulos SIL fonts, for instance from the packages fonts-sil-charis and fonts-sil-doulos on Debian or Ubuntu:


   sudo apt install fonts-sil-charis

   sudo apt install fonts-sil-doulos

If you cannot install those packages, you can download the two fonts from Summer Institute of Linguistics and follow the installation instructions there.

4. Running Praat from the command line

To run Praat from a terminal window, write a Praat script and specify that script on the command line, optionally with arguments, e.g.:

praat --run playsinewave.praat 377 0.9

For details see Calling from the command line in the Scripting manual.

5. Known possible problems, and their solution

1. Sound not working?

Audio on Linux is notoriously fragile. Praat either uses PulseAudio or Alsa, and you choose between these with Praat -> Preferences -> Sound playing preferences. If neither option works, the Ubuntu website suggests 16 steps that you may try to get audio to work.

6. Debian info

Praat is included in the Debian distribution. To install Praat on your Debian computer, do

aptitude install praat

The Debian package includes a praat-open-files command that allows opening files from the command line inside a Praat process that is already running.

Recent upstream versions of the Praat package backported to the stable and testing distributions of Debian are available in an APT repository.

7. Editions of Praat for older computers or older operating system versions

We do not create Praat editions for 32-bit Linux any longer (except for Raspberry Pi). The last one is Praat 6.1.15 of 20 May 2020. If that is too old for you, you could try to compile a newer version by yourself from the sources.

by Paul Boersma.
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