As professional writers and editors, we can't count how many times Auto Save has saved our butts during crunch time. Auto Save is bar none one of the best features to come out of the mouth of Lion, and now OS X Mountain Lion has taken it and made it even better. It's got new features like enabling you to rename files from the title bar and the ability to save directly to iCloud. Read on and we'll walk you through these nifty new features.
Renaming documents usually requires you to either exit the document and rename the file from the Finder, or duplicate the file with a different name. In Mountain Lion, Auto Save now gives you the ability to rename directly from the title bar of the currently opened document.
In the app that supports the new Auto Save feature, mouse over the title of the document in the title bar, and click the downward pointing disclosure triangle. In the pop up that appears, select “Rename.” You can also access this feature by selecting File > Rename in some apps.
The title of the document will be replaced with a text box for you to rename the document. Type in the new name and press enter to save the changes.
We’ve all done it. You have a document opened and accidentally delete a few sentences (or the whole document!) and then proceed to save the document. Fortunately, Mountain Lion’s new “Revert to Last Saved” feature in Auto Save lets you get back your hard work.
Clicking on the disclosure triangle beside the document name again, you will notice a “Revert To:” section with the last status of the document, and corresponding date and time. To revert your document to this status, simply click the status of the document at the state you wish to revert to. You can also select “Browse All Versions” to open the versions viewer and select a particular point in time to revert to.
Sometimes if your document is stored locally, you may wish to save it to iCloud for editing on your iPad or iPhone. Fortunately, this process is a lot easier from many OS X apps with Auto Save built-in.
After opening the Auto Save menu, select “Move To...” If you have “Documents & Data” enabled in the iCloud System Preferences, then you will see a dialog for saving to iCloud. If iCloud is not selected, you can select it from the “Where” drop-down menu. After naming your document, click Save to have it whisked off to the cloud.
iCloud supports unlimited “Untitled” documents; so, if you wish to leave the name of the document blank until later, your document will still sync with the “Untitled” Save As name.
There are new keyboard shortcuts in town for two of the Auto Save features. If you wish to duplicate a document, you can now use Command + Shift + S to do so. If you wish to use the “Save As” command to save the document using a different name and location, you can use the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + Option + S.
Cory Bohon is a freelance technology writer, indie Mac and iOS developer, and amateur photographer. Follow this article's author, Cory Bohon on Twitter.
chirpity
August 06, 2012 at 9:10pm
I agree with noibs. Also, having auto-save on a laptop that has a built in battery is basically an admission that your applications WILL crash at some point, rather than the power going out and causing data loss.
That said, what I would have given for this feature 15 years ago...
noibs
July 31, 2012 at 8:14pm
I'll grant that certain people really like autosave and versions. As for me, I can't stand either. I would give a lot for a preference that could turn off both of these "features" and return to "Save as..." in the File menu (without having to hold down the option key in Mt. Lion).
I had been splitting my time between Pages/Numbers and LibreOffice prior to Lion. Now, I hardly ever use Pages/Numbers because of these great "features" (not).
I'm a higher-ed faculty member who has been using Macs since 1984. I have thousands of word processing, spreadsheet and graphics files. I still do a lot of writing. I still hate versions and autosave.
And yes, I always have autosave turned off in all of my applications that have that feature. And no, I can't remember the last time I've lost any work.
