Blender doesn't autosave

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1

Hello,

I recently made a fatal mistake in one of my projects and didn’t realize until it was too late. I was directed to the File > Recover folder. The folder was empty, as it had always been. I have never realized until now that there’s actually supposed to be auto saves in it. There’s always just been “quit.blend, copybuffer_pose.blend”. No other files.

After looking around for a bit I realized I am not the only person with this issue. But I can’t seem to figure out what is causing it as people have asked but not came to any solid conclusions. It’s all a little all over the place.

There’s been mentions of addons causing issues with the program not realizing Auto Save is actually turned on and that copying older or newer userpref files over can fix it. I’d like to not do this since I have a LOT of custom keybinds and addons that would take hours to set back up.

Has anyone else had similar issues? I desperately need help because losing this much work makes me want to switch to Maya, thanks.

I use Blender 4.0.0 on Windows 11

2

Not sure your os but in Linux auto-saves by default go to the systems “temporary files” folder- /tmp I think windows as well - should be something like C:\Users\AppData\Local\Temp folder

Ouch… I have not heard that one.
check out your system Temp folder - good luck!

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3

Yeah I have, it’s empty of autosave files

4

It works fine for almost a decade for me on I don’t even know how many machines and operating systems. Maybe you should switch to Maya :smiley:

Or maybe try changing the auto save folder in the preferences:

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You need to make sure Blender can write files to that folder and is not limited by permissions of the OS whatever it is.

Blender add-ons are often written by simple users like you and me and there is no guarantee that no add-on that messes this functionality exists, so looking through your enabled add-ons is still a good idea. Generally, auto save works fine on pretty much any new Blender installation except probably with some Linux distros that work in weird ways, which is kind of hard to avoid because there are so many, but then one should be prepared to fix these issues if they chose to use weird Linux distros.

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5

I can’t really help you about the autosave, I don’t use them, instead I make save increments (.001, .002, and so on). Have you checked your OS has some sort of recovery system? MacOS has Time Machine, and I’m not sure what the equivalent is on Windows or Linux but these things exist and sometimes they’re always on even if you never cared to check

6

Haha yeah maybe it’s time for me to make the switch. I might have to use it due to my profession anyways.

I’ve changed the folder and tried with multiple discs, no difference.

That’s a looooot of addons though :face_exhaling:

I’m on Windows

7

Yeah I’ll definitely end up making more manual backups for the future, to avoid this. But it’d be nice to have something automatic.

That’s a good idea, I think I might’ve seen something in Windows before? Although I don’t remember if it was in 11, which I’m using now… I’ll have a look, cheers.

8

???

https://www.reddit.com/r/Maya/comments/19ew7gr/autosave_should_be_enabled/?rdt=62396

Looks like Maya is not the king of auto-save either.

9

It’s much easier to press Cntl S.

10

Never depend on a feature you have not used before… oh i see i have 1.7GB of /tmp/*_autosave.blend files :sweat_smile: time to delete something…

Also… ( sometimes it is the simplest thing… :wink: ):

autosaveEnabledAtAll
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11

It’s on, I’ve already tried to play around with it but no matter what I do nothing changes
image

12

I’ve learnt to save every like 3 minutes, but that didn’t save me from what happened here.

13

It was just to clearify it… (and you only want to have one backup when overriding by simple save Ctrl-S ??)

14

It’s a pity that we can’t find the automatic backup file.
However, there are only a few cases where automated backup files actually helped. :sweat_smile:

Creating a file step by step is the most obvious way. :slightly_smiling_face:

15

I got this one running, it got more options
It’s old but works up to 4.3
I’m on windows, I don’t know if it runs on Linux

https://github.com/sambler/addonsByMe/blob/master/auto_blend_save.py

16

When you look for the .blen1, or blend2 in the file through Blender you need to uncheck the filter icon. . . it’s in the upper right corner, looks like a funnel.

FileMenu
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to see them/

17

I know. :smiley:

I have only seen problems with auto save in Blender when Blender does not have OS permissions to write to the location or they could as well get deleted by disk cleanup tools since they are in the temp folder by default.

I usually keep around 20-30GB of auto saves before deleting. Works for me. It’s not such a big deal. Disk space is very cheap these days. You can get an SSD of 100GB just for auto saves for 16 euros where I live…That’s a price of a pair of socks if you think about it…

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18

If I remember correctly there are at least 3 cases where autosaves are not gonna work:

  • sculpting mode
  • painting on texture datablock without manually saving it
  • some temporary addon disabling it without re enabling it properly

So make sure to test if autosaving works with factory settings first:

image

If it works with defaults then some addon is culprit.

19

You wear expensive socks :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

20

I don’t. I am just good at finding excuses for buying computer parts. :smiley:

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