Glossary » autosave

autosave

a software feature that saves the file periodically while the user works on a document. Usually a user would need to explicitly save a file and risk forgetting to. The user would lose data if the application fails (e.g. during a power outage) and the user hasn’t saved. Autosave has the risk on the other hand, of overwriting previous versions of a file and preventing a user from reverting without saving changes. For this reason, the autosave feature often allows backups to be made automatically, may query the user before each save, and can allow a schedule to be determined for when it saves.

Another model for saving data is common in database systems — persistence. Persistent systems never require the user to save the data explicitly, but save the data whenever a sufficient chunk of data is modified.