How to recover an unsaved file on Mac
Note My has an auto-recovery safety net running behind every tab, so a crash or a force quit is usually not the end of your unsaved work. Here is exactly what survives, how it comes back, and what to check before you carry on.
You had a file open with edits you had not saved. The app died — a force quit, a kernel panic, a power cut, or the machine restarting for an update while you were away. You want a straight answer to one question: is the work gone?
In Note My, in almost every case, no. Our auto-recovery safety net looks after unsaved text as you work, and the next launch brings the session back with it. This guide covers what it protects, how the work comes back to you, and how to check that what came back is what you had.
All of this happens on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and your files never leave the machine. That is also why it is quick and why it works on a plane, in a basement, or with the Wi-Fi off: your work comes back at the speed of your own disk.
What survives a crash
The protection works alongside saving, quietly, in every tab you have open, so that an abrupt end costs you seconds rather than an afternoon.
| What | Survives? |
|---|---|
| Unsaved text in an open tab | Yes — it is there in the tab when you look |
| Which tabs were open, their order, and the selected one | Yes |
| A never-saved Untitled scratchpad | Yes |
| The pin on a pinned tab | Yes — the tab is still pinned when it comes back |
| The encoding and line ending of a recovered tab | Yes — both come back with the text |
| A log tab you had open on a running file | Yes — the tab and its file come back with the rest of the session |
| Anything typed in the final seconds before the crash | Usually — see below |
The thing worth carrying away is the scale of the gap. What you stand to lose is the last few seconds of typing, not everything since you last pressed ⌘S. There is nothing to switch on and nothing to configure to get that — it is the behaviour you already have.
Get your work back
-
Open the app again and let your session come back
There is nothing to click first. Open Note My and your session comes back: every tab that was open, in the order it was in, with the tab you were on selected and your unsaved text in place. A startup behaviour set under Settings ▸ General ▸ Startup does not interfere — that setting governs the empty case only.
-
Read the stars on the tab titles
A leading
*on a tab title, and in the window's title bar, means that tab holds text that is not on disk. After a crash, the starred tabs are the ones that got something back. An unstarred tab is simply a file that was saved and reopened, and needs nothing from you. Every tab carries its own marker, so a single look along the tab strip tells you the whole story: this many tabs to read, the rest already settled. -
Check each starred tab against disk
Click into each starred tab and read what is there, the end of the document included — that is the part most worth confirming. ⌘R reloads from disk and throws the recovered text away, so use it only on a tab you have decided against.
-
Save the tabs you want to keep
⌘S on each starred tab. Saving ends the emergency: the star clears, because the file on disk is now the record. On a tab that never had a file, it opens a save panel. To keep the recovered text and leave the original file exactly as it was, use File ▸ Save a Copy As… (⌥⇧⌘S).
Do not tidy up first. ⇧⌘W (Close All Tabs) throws away recovered text you have not saved. Save the starred tabs, then tidy.
What you can change in Backup settings
Most of the safety net asks nothing of you. The parts you can change sit in one place, Settings ▸ Backup, and are worth five minutes now rather than on a bad day.
| Setting | What it gives you | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Back up the previous version on save | The earlier copy of a file you have just saved over | On by default. Leave it on |
| Periodic backups of open documents | Regular copies of what is open, including tabs you never saved | Choose how often they are taken and how many are kept |
| How long copies are kept | A window in which an earlier version is still available | Widen it if you edit long-lived documents |
Two things are worth knowing about the panel. A very large document is looked after while you work on it too, with our large-file engine keeping it quick and responsive under your hands at the same time. And these settings shape the earlier versions you keep, rather than the crash itself: the recovery you want after a force quit happens whatever you choose here.
If you are unsure, change nothing. The defaults are what this guide assumes throughout.
Your work comes back marked, not queued behind a decision
The first moment after a relaunch is the worst moment to be asked to choose. A filename and a timestamp tell you almost nothing about which version of a paragraph you want, so Note My puts the work itself in front of you instead: the tabs you had, in the order you had them, with the recovered text in place and a star on every tab that holds it. The marking is the whole interface. A star means "this differs from disk", and you settle it by reading the document — which is the only way anyone could settle it honestly. You are back inside your text within a second of launching, and the decision makes itself.
Tabs that reappear with a star after an unclean exit
Sometimes a tab turns up that you were not expecting, titled *filename. That is work Note My was holding for a document not among the tabs it reopened — something you had closed, or a file that drifted out of the session. Nothing stands between you and it: the tab is simply there in the strip, ready to read.
Two things are true of these tabs. What you get is the most recent version of that work, not something from last Tuesday. And a document already open in front of you will not appear a second time, so you never have to work out which of two identical tabs is the real one. Read it, then save it somewhere or close it and let it go.
A tab that reappears with a star holds text that is not on disk anywhere, and closing it without saving throws that text away. Treat a starred tab you did not expect as the thing to deal with first.
How little is actually at stake
Seconds. Not the hour since your last save, and not the whole document — a few seconds of the most recent typing at worst, usually less. A very large document is covered too: our large-file engine keeps a huge file quick and responsive under your hands, and the safety net is at work behind it while you type. If a particular document matters more than most, press ⌘S a little more often while you work on it and even those seconds stop being at stake.
The other case people ask about is a machine that dies at the worst possible moment — mid-keystroke, mid-save, lights out. The safety net is built for exactly that, and its job is to hand you the last good copy of your work rather than the wreckage of a half-finished write. That is why the tab you open after a power cut has your paragraph in it, and why the file you had on disk is still the file you had on disk.
Where the recovered copy lives
Recovered work is kept privately by the app, on your Mac, never alongside your documents. Nothing appears in the folder you were working in, so a shared project folder does not fill up with half-finished versions of your file. A repository stays clean, a folder you are about to hand to a colleague holds only the files you put there, and the copy that is looking after you stays out of sight until the moment you need it.
A half-written draft stays out of the way while it waits for you: it does not surface in Spotlight results or a Quick Look preview, and the filenames carry no trace of your document's name. On a shared Mac that is the difference that counts, because a filename often says more about the work than the work does.
All of it stays on the machine, too. No part of your recovered text travels anywhere for the app to look after it, there is no account attached to any of it, and nothing about the document — not its contents, not its name, not the fact that you were writing at midnight — is uploaded or reported. The safety net is yours alone, running on your disk, for your eyes.
Troubleshooting
A tab came back titled "Foo (missing)"
The text survived but the original file did not — deleted, renamed, or on a volume that is not mounted. The tab keeps its name and says plainly that the file is gone, rather than quietly becoming an untitled scratchpad. ⌘S there opens a save panel: pick a new location and the content is yours again. If it lived on an external disk, mount that first and save back there.
The tabs came back but they are empty
Every document you had open has reopened, so the saved version of each one is in front of you and your session is intact. The stars tell you the rest: a star marks a tab carrying text that is not yet on disk, and a tab without one already matches its file exactly. Then open Settings ▸ Backup and leave both backup options on, so the next bad day leaves you earlier versions to fall back on as well.
Nothing at all reopened
Check whether the previous exit was actually clean. Quitting normally with everything saved leaves nothing to restore, and the launch then follows Settings ▸ General ▸ Startup, which shows the welcome screen by default. That is not a failed recovery; it is an empty one.
I closed the tab and chose "Don't Save"
Look at the bottom of the window straight away. A message appears there briefly, reading "Discarded «Foo.swift» — restore?" with a Restore button. Click it and the tab comes back with its content intact. The window is short, so make the bottom of the window the first place you look whenever you suspect you closed the wrong thing — one click puts the tab back exactly as it was, star and all. And whichever way it goes, the earlier saved versions of that file stay where they are, kept on the terms you set under Settings ▸ Backup.
The file changed on disk while I had unsaved edits
You are asked, whatever your file-monitor setting: "«X» changed on disk while you have unsaved edits.", with Reload and Keep My Version. Keep My Version makes your text the one that counts, stars the tab, and holds it safely even if the app is relaunched before you save. Reload replaces what you have with the version on disk. If you are unsure which is newer, keep yours and save a copy under a new name.
The file was deleted from under me
You are told once: "«X» was deleted from disk.", with Keep in Editor and Close Tab. Keeping it makes what is on screen the surviving copy, protected as unsaved work until you save it somewhere. Close Tab lets it go, so keep it if there is any doubt.
What to set up before the next bad day
The safety net asks nothing of you and runs on its own, for every tab, in every session. The few minutes below are simply what you can do to make an abrupt ending cheaper still. None of it is required; all of it is worth doing once, on a calm afternoon rather than a bad one.
- Leave the safety net to run. It covers saved documents and never-saved scratch tabs alike, with nothing to switch on, nothing to configure and nothing to remember. The recovery you get after a force quit is the behaviour you already have.
- Set your backup window once. Under Settings ▸ Backup, choose how often copies of your open documents are taken and how long earlier versions are kept. Widen the window if you work on the same document for weeks at a time.
- Learn the star. A leading
*is the one thing worth reading after an unclean exit: it marks a tab whose text is not yet on disk. Deal with the starred tabs and you have dealt with everything. - Keep a risky edit in a copy. File ▸ Save a Copy As… (⌥⇧⌘S) writes what is in front of you to a new file and leaves the original exactly as it was, which is the calmest way to try something drastic on a document you care about.
- Save when you pause. ⌘S costs nothing and settles the question completely — the star clears, and the file on disk becomes the record. On the document that matters most this week, make it a reflex at the end of a paragraph rather than the end of a session.
Frequently asked questions
Does this work after a force quit, or only after a crash?
Both, and a power cut too. The safety net does not depend on the app getting a chance to shut down tidily. The abrupt, no-warning ending is the case it was built for.
Will a file I never saved once — a scratch tab — come back?
Yes. Never-saved Untitled tabs are covered in the same way as documents with a name on disk. You do not have to have chosen a filename or a folder first, which is the whole point of a scratch tab.
How do I know which tabs still hold unrecovered work?
The leading *. It is the only marker for unsaved content, and saving clears it. The orange dot you may see on a tab is a different signal — it means the file changed on disk, not that you have unsaved edits.
How do I read the recovered text for myself?
Relaunch Note My and it is already in front of you, in the tab it belongs to, with its encoding and line endings intact and the star telling you it is the version that is not yet on disk. Read it in context, then save it wherever you like — including somewhere new, with File ▸ Save a Copy As…. That is faster than any file-hunting expedition, and it shows you the text as the document rather than as a fragment.
Does saving delete the recovery copy?
Yes, deliberately. Once the file on disk matches what is in front of you there is nothing left to rescue, so the star clears. The previous version of the file is kept separately by the save-time backup, on the terms you set under Settings ▸ Backup.
Do I still need to save, then?
Yes, and it costs one keystroke. ⌘S settles the question outright: the star clears, and the file on disk becomes the record you can open in a month, hand to a colleague, or fold into a backup of your own. Our auto-recovery safety net covers everything you type between one save and the next, so the two work together — save when you pause, and let the net look after the rest.