Thanks to Robert Deaton, WordPress and WordPress.com now have an autosave feature. While you are working on a draft, your edits are automatically saved every minute. All of this happens in the background; you won’t even notice it except for a small notification message next to the Save button. If your browser crashes while you are editing, simply go back to your Manage page and click on the title of your draft. It will be there waiting for you.
Automatically Save Your Drafts
August 11, 2006 · Updated on March 4, 2025 · 1 min read
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WordPress.com News 
Cool!
Thank you once again.
I’m working with Mozilla Firefox and here this autosave always throws me back to beginning of my text, when it autosaves. It’s quite boring to scroll back to the end to continue writing.
But anyway, this autosave is good idea. Really:)
How thoughtful!
Thanks WordPress!
This is another great free feature!!! Thank you very much!!
I had an issue similar to afrodisiax using Firefox’s new beta version. Though it only happened occasionally. But this has been a great new feature, especially when you have system crashes on PCs. I’ve lost a few posts that way early on and had started using a word processing program to write them. Maybe I don’t have to anymore 🙂
Thanks guys!
thankx.
I hope this will be implemented in a future version of WordPress (2.1?). I have been waiting for this feature. I lost some posts, sometimes very long posts, because I forgot to save and suddenly something happend and everything got lost. This is very demotivating.
So this is a great new feature and I hope I will see it in the standalone WordPress soon!
greets
Oh, I have read too quickly. Now I have seen that this is in the WordPress trunk already. Thanks!
Same problem with Firefox as afrodisiax.
Really frustrating. And if you don´t check what you are writing, you get really bad rep as a writer very soon.
I’d have to agree with afrodisiax: getting thrown back to the beginning of the post every minute or so is a bit annoying. The other thing that’s been a bit disruptive is that every time I complete a post the second to last version of my post that was autosaved doesn’t get removed from my drafts automatically.
Autosave is great, but it’d be nice if you could iron out these last little bugs.
good as always … you guys rock!
Great free feature!
THANKS!
It’s buggy. I was wondering why I had lost a bit of what I was writing last night, and I knew that something was going on.
I love the idea though, and I have suggested this in the feedback a while back. Hopefully, it will not give any problems, in the future.
Like afrodisiax said, it throws you back to the beginning of the entire text, which can be confusing imho.
I am confident that the bugs will be worked out. Autosave seems like a great feature. I have lost an entire article before, due to lack of this feature, and my own boneheadedness.
So, *that’s* what’s messing up my writing. Great idea, and your hearts are in the right place, really, but as afrodisiax says, it’s disconcerting at best to have the cursor position change. It would be nice to have the option to turn this off, or to specify the frequency.
Awesome! This saves me a lot of hassle of clicking the “save and continue” button all the time, and then wait for the page to load again.
The cursor reset bug was fixed before we announced. If you had problems before, try it again.
This was a lifesaver for me earlier, thanks!
i was also experiencing the cursor reset, but sans bug, its a great idea!! thanks!
When you post, there’s still a draft copy left. There needs to be a way to ‘Delete All Draft Posts’. Apart from that, it’s a great idea.
That is sweet! Thank you! 😀
wow, neat stuff. thanks lots
I use Firefox and didn’t notice the cursor problem. This is a great feature for me because sometimes my computer has a “mind of its own” and will crash when I try to save. I am so happy with WP (sniff, sniff). Thanks for another great feature.
Steve, the extra draft bug should be fixed too.
This is most excellent. Just lost a post the other day because I hit the stupid back button.
Cool Ryan, it seems to be working fine now. And to my delight, this also works with writing pages, as well as with writing posts.
Excellent —must-needed feature!
Great work! 😎
Noticed the extra draft bug and the get back home bug earlier this afternoon – both have now gone. This is a very good feature indeed, thank you.
awesome
The problem my good friend afrodisiax and others are experiencing can be adressed (untill the bug will be fixed, that is) by writing your post in an external text editor, such as Notebook, and copy/pasting the text when you are ready.
I did not notice this feature and ended up having a double post as I kept manually clicking to the “Save and continue editing” button like I am used to. Now that there is no need for that, I suppose I am not going to see those double posts either.
A nice feature. Thank you. 🙂
Excellent!
The bugs should already be fixed.
If they aren’t, send a feedback, don’t leave a comment.
If you leave a comment the right people might not see it and we don’t have enviroment debug info to help us track down the bug. Use feedbacks, please.
Cool…I thought it was a glitch when I kept thinking that my posts were being lost. Does it work equally as well in IE and Firefox? I think I was having bugs while browsing in IE. Thought it was a browswer issue.
wow. another of those great features you people come up with! kudos to you!
This is an awesome feature…
-Zack
Great! I had the same problem with the cursor last night before you announced it and left some feedback. All fixed now though. Thanks!
Weeeeeee!
No seriously.
YES!!!!! No more trying “long post-and-the-browser-crashes” moments!
YEAH!
Thanks a lot, guys!
Nice! Good job guys!
Wonderful boys. I like people that constantly try to emprove. Thank’s for this new function
this is great! 😀
great, i’ve had that problem earlier with firefox, too many extensions XD
Brilliant! Thanks.
Thats one awesome feature you’ve added, hopefully no more lost post cries now on! 😀
Yeah, I like it ;-).
Thanks… Gmail docet 😉
mkc
Thanks
But if you publish right away from your editor additionally the draft is still there … That’s not nice 😦
Yeah!!
This is perfect… I wish you had that few weeks ago…
If you can find a Greek Spelling solutions 🙂 i will be in love again and again …
having lost a few posts because of using beta versions of browsers I must say that this change is much appreciated.
Perfect !!!! i wish i had it earlier
This is great! Thanks!
I’ve been waiting for soooo long for this feature! Thanks guys!
yeeees 🙂
please, let’s it will be optional !
when you automatic save my post and THEN i publish the post, the system KEEP the draft, so i MUST DELETE EVERY DRAFT published yet manually. this is not a good thing.
Thanks!
It have improved greatly… Thanks! Great service.
I love this, thanks! I use FF and haven’t had any issues with this function at all, including the drafts, I have none, just the way I like it!
Would it be wrong to ask if there’s a plugin we can use on our own installs, this function is so very needed on all my blogs! LOL
Similar issue to afrodisiax, but I wasn’t using firefox. I was using Explorer and had the browser open in the background because I was writing in between doing other things. The problem was that everytime it autosaved, it automatically pulled the Explorer window to the front, taking me away from what I was working on. Very inconvenient. Nice idea, though. Keep working on it.
The two bugs I mentioned, Drafts and cursor resetting are indeed fixed for me. Great work guys!
cool, thanx!
Great,i’ve been expecting for this feature a long time.
Thanks wordpress people!
thanks
Great idea. I had the mentioned bug of coming back to the beginning but this was fixed really quick. So great for the idea, great for the speed at fixing (and replying to the feedback).
Hi Folks..
i had a problem yesterday as i wanted to publish a post. I have got a never seen WordPress-transmission-page. in this i had to confirm “Do you really want to edit “_” ” Yes/No. I pressed “Yes” but nothing happend. Just my post was gone! I had to type it again.
I solved it by testing “Save and Continue”. After this i could publish it.
Another thing is: If i have got two WordPress-Websites open as i am logged in and i am typing an post, the “Saving-Process” changes automatically thes Website back to the Postediting-Site.
I hope this little Problems will just disappear – somehow somewhere.
Best Regards
PeterPan
Wowee! I must’ave lost somewhere around a dozen posts just beacuse this feature wasn’t there ( And yes! also coz of an errant power supply!!)
thanks for this Guys!
Great !
You have fixed he bugs very fast ! Great, great, great !
Great idea, but I do find it a bit annoying when it jumps further up on the page when I’m looking at the post preview on the bottom. And since I look at other websites while working on my posts, the WordPress page pops in front every minute — also somewhat annoying. Is there any fix for that or should I stick to writing my posts in a text editor and pasting them into WordPress?
This came in handy this weekend. Thanks… Keep them coming
it work for me!, good work 😉
How about making it optional until you work the bugs out (see 72. learningnerd above). Thanks and keep up the good work!
Ditto to the annoying element mentioned by learningnerd in post 72.
I noticed that it doesn’t automatically save with Flock. It did before but it’s not now.
Wow! That’s cool! Now I don’t have to worry about my browser doing weird things while I’m away or when my power goes off (too frequently).
Another classic by wordpress. This is coming in very handy.
I’m dropping by to say that I have fouund the addition of this feature to be very useful. Thanks for providing it. 🙂
Life savers! 😀 Thanks, awesome addon.
Muchos gracias!
Thanks mates
oh thanks a lot! 😀
Any thought yet to making this feature optional? Bill Gates and Microsoft already have me well-trained to save, save, save my drafts. I think your autosave works better than the Google Page Creator autosave, for what that’s worth.
I find that after this was operational, sometimes when i publish my posts the title and the tags get saved and published, but my matter does not. Anything Im doing wrong???
I now copy the text into the clipboard and edit the post and past the text
Does this need to be switched on somewhere ?
Or does it only work if you have actually clicked ‘save’ at some point when preparing a new post?
I just lost a LONG post because another link opened in the WP browser window – no worries I thought, autosave will have kept it, but no! Argghhhh!!!!!