Auto-Save Function in Trello

[Doma Decimator]

There have been quite a few times when I wrote up an entire description or comment and moved away without saving, then forgot to go back and save before I closed Trello. 

I know that's probably more of a ME problem than an actual problem with Trello, but I was wondering why exactly the saving system works the way it does. With Evernote, for example, everything autosaves the moment you close it . 

I've seen this question brought up a few times here and there but no real answers were given.

Is this feature difficult to implement, or does nobody else actually need it, or...? 

Just wondering.

[Denise · Accepted solution]

Hi Doma,

Loosing that content is definitely frustrating and I agree, an auto-save function for all the fields in Trello would be a neat feature to have. It's something we'd like to see implemented at some point but it isn't on our immediate roadmap, mainly because there's higher priority items that we're currently working on.

In Trello, edits that are being made are often a lot shorter than let's say in a Gdoc or mail where you might be drafting over a longer period of time and doing that in multiple sessions. That makes it a smaller use case for Trello and we don't see requests that frequently. We're definitely tracking interest in this internally though, and I've also let our team know that you'd like to see this feature added to Trello.

Hope that helps!

[Doma Decimator]

Ah okay, that makes sense! Thank you!

I was also thinking if it would be easier, maybe something that shows unsaved changes from the main board view, like a red tag or something? So before leaving you can check at a glance... But yeah in any case thanks! 

[Hernan Rovira]

Hi @Denise . The current year is 2019. ¿Are you working on adding this feature to your roadmap? It's much needed. Thanks.

[Liz Crowell]

@Denise . Please add auto-save to Trello. 

[Hernan Rovira]

Hi @Denise at Atlassian . The current year is 2020. ¿Are you working on adding this feature to your roadmap? It's much needed. Thanks.

[Andrew Farrell]

The Emotional Power of Lost Work -- Why auto-save should be a higher priority

Humans are [loss-averse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion). We feel more fear and pain of losing something than excitement at gaining it. When the thing lost is work we just wrote, we feel frustration at both ourselves and at the tool.

If the work is irreversibly lost due to an single accidental click or keypress, then users feel like it resulted from their clumsiness. Embarrassed users are less likely to consciously blame the Trello or report it as a UI bug. However, even if a user who has suddenly lost work does not just say it, they _feel_ less good about Trello. The tool has less of a feeling of simplicity and sureness to it. It _feels_ less _trustworthy_.

That ambient wariness harms the whole trello ecosystem.

[Deleted user]

Dear @Denise ,

Love Trello - use it all the time.  Down with Assana.

I'd like to vote for an autosave function.  What do you say we add it to the roadmap?

Warmly,

JP

[Daniel Vartanian]

How this feature does not exist by now???

[Asia]

Updated 12/31/20:  Switched to Asana and it offers auto-save!  (and it's free!)

Where is the autosave function??? I've lost waaaaayyy too many  updates by accidentally clicking out of the field without saving. It should not be be that easy to lose work.  I'm looking for another alternative because this happening even once a month, is much too often. 

[Joe Houska]

Ugh.

Not having auto-save severely limits the ways Trello could be used and get an even bigger fan-base.  It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.  If there's no auto-save feature, Trello won't be used in ways that involve longer entries.  Trello won't get those requests and will stay smaller than it could be.

For example, I've been using it for journaling, but recommend that others stay away from Trello.  Too many times, I've experienced the anguish of losing important events that I had beautifully captured or significant insights, and simply didn't have the time to write it up again, or found the insight to be fleeting.

Unless Trello gets an auto-save feature, Trello will never enjoy the huge bases of users who could use it in a myriad of ways that involve longer card description. 

I've also noticed, like bgo in his/her Jan 14 2020 "answer" below, that I'm no longer seeing the "unsaved edits" feature that I used to.  So it seems that Trello is moving backward as to this highly desirable feature.

BTW sometime non-trello webpages somehow stop me from navigate to a different URL on that tab in my browser, giving me a pop-up warning about unsaved changes.  Might Trello be able to install such a feature (ideally with the ability to opt-in (or out))?  Anything that helps prevent at least some of the ways that unsaved changes can be lost would be helpful.

So impressed with Trello.  So frustrated by all my lost work.

Joe

[Hernan Rovira]

Hi @Denise The current year is 2021. ¿Are you working on adding this feature to your roadmap? It's much needed. Thanks.

[Emily Abrahams]

Just lost a shit ton of work when my computer crashed. Cannot believe there's no autosave function. Will not be using Trello again. It's 2021. How is this not a feature, I don't understand.

[Jeff Pilisuk]

Just fix this please. I've lost work multiple times and am about to dump using Trello because of this annoying problem. 

[jat273]

I'd like to chime in, as a new Trello user the lack of auto-save is a constant frustration for me.

[Johan Möller]

Plus one on the need for auto-save

[Gustavo Rivera]

It's 2022 now.  I just came here after realizing that several comments were not shared because not manually "saved", very poor UX

[Hernan Rovira]

Hi Denise (I can't mention you now, ¿why?). The current year is 2022. ¿Are you working on adding this feature to your roadmap? It's much needed. Thanks.

[Alex Reeves]

+1. I've found Trello is useful for note taking in sales or creative calls thus keeping everything in one pipeline but recently important lost notes since i didn't save. 

[konektor]

2020, and Trello is still without autosave. The biggest value in Trello is data, but you don't implement such an essential feature. Why? Is that a premium feature?

I suggest you to use Evernote to store the text and put the link in a Trello card. What a solution @Trello?

[penghan]

Just lost large amount of text entered in a card due to an accidental hit of ESC. It's 2020 and not having auto-save is crazy!

[Gustavo Rivera]

+1 It's now 2022, is available yet?

[bgo]

I'd like to bump this topic.

Furthermore, I have noticed something strange: it seems to me that, in the past, if I made edits to a card description and pressed ESC by mistake, a message "This card has unsaved edits" would appear and that editing again would show my pending changes.

However, this no longer seems to be the case: pressing ESC now loses all edits with no (visible) option to recover them.

Has something changed regarding this?

Do you happen to know if a better auto-save (or recover) system will be available in the future?

[Cliff Lapenskie]

I would love to see an autosave as well.  I've been burned a few times now with not saving and my team members don't see my response.

[The Story Smith]

The other day, I created a new list, a new card and added extensive notes. Today? Nothing. The list isn't there, neither is the card. How can this be? I was definitely connected to the internet, and the card was saved and closed several times, but now it's entirely disappeared and doesn't even feature in the activity feed. Why didn't it autosave?

I now have to take a whole day tomorrow writing up new notes. 

[Milt Reynolds]

Four years now...over four years! I've a hunch, that since the first response from the Atlassian team was selected as "ANSWER ACCEPTED", way back in 2018, that the issue is entirely shelved...I doubt that any of this reaches the eyes of any Atlassian team member...frustrating!

[Deleted user]

JULY. 16. 2022.

I'm new to Trello!!!! I LIKE what I see but ... I started wondering about autosave.

I've been using Simplenote for certain items and it automatically saves All. The. Time.

Soooooooooooo, has autosave been implemented yet in Trello? I find it almost impossible to believe that it hasn't. It''s that important. Without an autosave function/ability, I'm afraid I'm "outta here." Sad, but true. I mean--it IS 2022. This is just some coding. And you're a software development firm, right?!? There seems to be a distinct disconnect here.

[Asia]

I left Trello and went to Asana (also free)  because of the missing Trello auto-save.  Some very frustrating losses had me jump ship.  

[Hernan Rovira]

And then another year without auto-save function.

[Hernan Rovira]

Implement auto-save !!

[Bänz_Ledin]

+1

Yesterday I lost the notes from a sales call. Names, the terms that the client uses, their timeline... The description in a card can definitely be large and important enough to warrant an autosave function.

Caution: The "kind of autosave" that is there currently is local to the device where the edit was made (why would that be??) --> look for your unsaved edits on that device. On the one device, it seems pretty robust. I closed the browser, updated it, made a change on another device, re-opened the page and the changes were still there.

This also means that there can be multiple unsaved changes on different devices.

[Margo]

I would love to see an auto save feature. If trello is my go to app for capturing actions and it doesn’t auto save I may drop the ball on something inintentionally. 

Ive sat down to write a short note and it turned into a blog. I’ve lost at least three blogs now because there is no auto save. 

Because this feature is not part of trello I may stop using it due to its unreliabilty. 

[Jodi LeBlanc]

Great question Doma, I would love this feature too. Similar to Google docs, with the auto-save functionality. I do notice that if I start typing a card description and then click on something else, when I go back to the card, my text is still there. I look forward to hearing what other say regarding your question.

[Milt Reynolds]

I have the same feature-desire. I depend upon the dates on which I make the comments, but if I forget to save the comment, it remains undated until I accidentally open that card up again. I found this thread by searching for someway to filter for unsaved cards.

[Hao Zhou]

Does Trello have autosave feature now? I speed 10 min to type my in the 'activity' box, and it is gone. please let me know how to turn it on. If not, PLEASE, I don't think it is hard to enhance the feature

[Maaike Droogers]

Just lost important notes of a meeting. It's the third time this happens to me. Very frustrating. Trello is really helping me organise my work, but this autosave issue is the big downside for me.

Please add the autosave (it's 2023(!))! 

[Milt Reynolds]

I've migrated away from Trello, after several years of daily use. This is the app I now use:

https://www.twosapp.com/home

I recommend it. It's free, customizable, effective, and easy to use.

It provides auto-saving!

[Jonathan]

Lost an important note today and I'm not sure how it happened. Should not have to hit "save" to keep the description field contents! And I see the original post is from 2018, womp womp

[m0useCat064]

Bump...

Pretty much no other notes-based webapp behaves like this - everything else simply autosaves as you type. The auto-delete of previously typed data makes it worse, especially when esc defaults to deleting what you typed in.

Programs that require manual save do so with ctrl-s.

Very basic UI usability issue that should be addressed.

[Chris Huynh]

Bumping the issue. I've frequently had to type description multiple times, not even from closing the app or sleeping my phone, but from accidentally clicking a different field (like the title) when I tried to tap the checkmark to save my content. My only reasonable workaround has been using my desktop/laptop instead, or typing in my notes app and then pasting and saving in the Trello app.