What the asterisk on a file tab means
Note My puts two different markers on a tab, and only one of them is about unsaved work. Here is exactly what each one is telling you, and what to do before you close that tab.
You glance at the tab bar and one tab reads *config.yaml while another has a small orange dot beside its name. Both look like warnings. They are not the same warning, they are not asking you for the same thing, and acting on the wrong reading of them is how people lose work. This page explains each marker precisely, and what happens when you save, reload or close a tab that is wearing one.
The leading star: uncommitted text, and nothing else
In Note My, a * in front of a tab's name means that tab holds text which has not been written to the file on disk. That is its entire meaning.
The star is honest in both directions: when it is showing, you have work the file does not have; when it is absent, you do not. It is never decorative.
Behind it sits our auto-recovery safety net. From your first keystroke in any tab — including an untitled one that has never existed in the Finder — the text you have not saved is held for you, so a crash or a power cut does not take the last stretch of work with it. That happens entirely on your Mac: nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and your files never leave the machine.
It is on for every tab, all the time, from the moment you start typing. There is nothing to enable, nothing to configure and nothing to remember, which is exactly what makes the star worth trusting: while it is showing, the work behind it is being held for you.
The safety net is there for the unexpected, not as a replacement for saving. ⌘S is still the only thing that puts your text into the file on disk, and the only thing that clears the star.
Where the star shows up besides the tab
The same star is drawn as a prefix in the window's title bar, so the frontmost document announces its own state whether or not the tab is visible. Between the tab and the title bar, the state of the document you are working in stays in view wherever your eye lands.
How to read a run of stars
A tab may show a single star or a short run of them. * and ***** mean exactly the same thing — unsaved work exists in that tab — and neither is a measure of how much text has changed. Read a run of stars exactly as you read one: work is waiting to go into the file.
If you want a real number, the status bar carries six counters: characters, words, spaces, lines, selection and occurrences. The last two follow your selection rather than the whole document. All six describe the text in front of you and keep up as you type, so you can size a whole file or a single paragraph without leaving the window.
What the orange dot is telling you
This is the single most common misreading in the tab bar, and the app is explicit about it: the orange dot means the file changed on disk. Something outside the editor — a build script, a colleague on a shared volume, a text-processing job, another application — wrote to the file backing that tab.
Keep the two apart and the tab bar reads cleanly: the star is your own unsaved work, the dot is the file's news. Note My watches every open file for changes made outside it, and marks background tabs too, so a change you are not looking at is still visible.
| Leading star | Orange dot | |
|---|---|---|
| Means | Unsaved text in this tab | The file changed on disk |
| Also shown | In the window title bar | In the status-bar badge |
| Caused by | You | Something outside the app |
| Cleared by | ⌘S | Reloading, or resolving the prompt |
| Appears on untitled tabs | Yes | Once you save it, from then on |
What happens next depends on whether you had edits of your own. With unsaved edits the prompt reads "«X» changed on disk while you have unsaved edits."; with nothing of your own outstanding, "«X» was modified outside the app." Both offer Reload and Keep My Version. The mode can be Ask (the default), Auto-Reload or Never, but a conflict with unsaved edits always prompts whatever it is set to.
Choosing Keep My Version makes the text in front of you the copy that counts, and nothing on disk is touched until you save. The tab gains a star, because what you kept is now different from the file on disk, and our auto-recovery safety net holds it, so the decision survives a relaunch. That is the one path where answering a dot produces a star.
If the file is deleted rather than changed you are told once — "«X» was deleted from disk." — and offered Keep in Editor or Close Tab.
How to read the status-bar badge
The tab shows a dot; the status bar tells you why. The badge shows one state at a time, and this is what each one is telling you:
| State | What it is telling you |
|---|---|
| File missing | The file backing this tab is no longer where it was. |
| External change pending | A change was seen and you have not answered it yet. |
| Disabled | Watching is off for this file. |
| Following tail | The tab is pinned to the end of a growing file. |
| Auto-reloading | Changes are being taken silently, without a prompt. |
| Watching | The ordinary resting state. |
The badge arrives with the file: save an untitled or recovered tab and it takes its place in the status bar, reporting on that file from then on. The badge's menu is where watching and auto-reload are turned on and off for the current file — the place to go if a build keeps rewriting a file under you.
A star on a tab you did not touch
Sometimes a star is waiting at launch on a tab you are sure you saved. That is recovery working, and it happens two ways.
The first is session restore. If the app was stopped without being quit — force quit, panic, power loss — the next launch gives you the session back: every tab that was open, in the order you had them, with the same tab selected and your unsaved text back in place. Tabs that were holding unsaved work come back wearing their stars.
The second covers tabs that were no longer open when the app stopped. If work from one of them was still being held for you, that tab reopens on its own, starred, with the text where you left it. You answer nothing and pick nothing from a list: the work is simply back, ready to read and save.
What a recovered tab looks like
A recovered tab arrives with a single star, whichever way it came back, and you read it exactly as you would read any other: the text in front of you is not in the file on disk yet. Nothing has been written on your behalf. Look at what came back, keep what you want, then save. Until you do, the tab stays under our auto-recovery safety net.
If the recovered text is not what you want, close the tab and choose Don't Save. Recovery is an offer, not an obligation.
Clearing the star
Saving is the whole answer. ⌘S writes the active tab and clears its star. It saves one document at a time — the toolbar's own tooltip reads "Save the active tab (⌘S)." — so you always know precisely which file you have just written, and the tab bar shows you the rest.
Two situations need a different move:
- An untitled tab has nowhere to be written, so ⌘S opens Save As. The extension is filled in for you to match the language shown for that document — our advanced language identifier does that part — so the file reopens looking the way you left it. Change it before you save if you want something else.
- A tab whose original file has gone is kept but detached from disk and retitled
Foo (missing). ⌘S routes to Save As there too, so you can give the text a fresh home on disk and carry on where you were.
Reading both markers before you close anything
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Read the star first
A star means the file on disk does not have what is in front of you. Decide whether you want that text before you do anything else.
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Then read the dot
An orange dot means the file has moved on without you. If a tab has both markers, someone else's change and your change are both real, and reloading discards yours.
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Close, and answer the sheet honestly
Closing a starred tab offers Save, Cancel or Don't Save. Don't Save is not immediately final: a panel appears at the bottom of the window for five seconds reading "Discarded «Foo.swift» — restore?" with a Restore button. Click it and the tab returns with its content, starred.
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Know what the bulk closes count as "saved"
Close Saved Tabs means tabs with no star. An untitled tab you have not typed in has no star either, so it goes with them. The File-menu ⇧⌘W variant confirms once for the whole set, offering Save All, Discard All or Cancel, which is the quickest way to clear a busy tab bar in one decision.
Getting more out of the two markers
Once you can read them at a glance, a few habits make the pair work harder for you:
- Let the stars set your saving order. A quick scan of the tab bar gives you the whole of your outstanding work, in the order you left it. Work down the row with ⌘S and the bar clears itself as you go.
- Lay two documents side by side when you want to see what moved. Our comparison view puts two open documents next to each other and marks every line that differs. Before a risky edit, File ▸ Save a Copy As… (⌥⇧⌘S) writes a second document you can compare against later and leaves the tab you are working in exactly as it was.
- Type freely in an untitled tab. Text in a tab that has never been near the Finder is held for you exactly as text in a named file is, which makes a scratch tab a safe place to think. Save it when it turns into something, and the star clears with everything else.
- Choose how outside changes reach each file. Ask, Auto-Reload and Never are set per file from the badge's menu, so a log you are following can take new lines quietly while the document you are drafting keeps asking first.
- Keep sensitive work moving through to disk. Text waiting in a starred tab sits on your Mac and nowhere else: nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and no copy lands on anyone's server. When the contents matter, save them where you want them kept, and the star clears behind you.
Troubleshooting
A tab is starred and I am certain I saved it
Check whether you chose Keep My Version at some point. That choice stars the tab on purpose: what is in front of you now differs from the file on disk by design. Saving resolves it.
Stars came back after a relaunch
That is recovery, not a failure. Unsaved text is handed back with its marker intact. If a tab you had closed reappears starred, that is work from it that was still being held for you. Save or discard it as you would any other starred tab.
The star will not clear when I save
If the title reads Foo (missing) the tab is no longer attached to a file and Save has been routed to Save As. Pick a destination and the star clears. If saving fails for a reason outside the app — no room on the disk, a folder you cannot write to — the star stays and your text stays with it. Make room on the disk or choose another destination and try again. Nothing is thrown away while the star is showing.
An orange dot appeared while you were in another tab
Prompts for a tab you are not looking at wait rather than interrupting you, and arrive when you switch to that tab. If the difference has resolved itself by the time you get there, no sheet appears and the dot clears. You are only ever asked once: if the file changed several times while you were away, you answer for where it stands now.
Getting the badge to appear on a new tab
Save it. Untitled and recovered tabs are not attached to a file on disk yet, so the badge waits until it has one to report on. The moment you save, it takes its place in the status bar and stays with that tab.
Frequently asked questions
Does the asterisk mean the file is corrupted or locked?
It is telling you about your text, not the health of the file: the tab holds work the file on disk does not have yet. Your file stays exactly as it was when you opened it, because nothing is written to it until you save — and the marker goes the moment you do.
Why do some tabs show several stars?
A tab can show a single star or a short run of them, and they all mean the same thing: unsaved work exists in that tab. The count is not a measure of how much has changed.
What is the orange dot on a tab, if not unsaved changes?
It means the file changed on disk while you had it open — something outside the editor wrote to it. Read the leading star for your own unsaved work and the dot for the file's, and a tab wearing both is telling you about two separate changes worth weighing before you reload.
How do I get rid of the star?
Two ways, both yours to choose. Save the tab and the star clears the instant your text is in the file, or close it and choose Don't Save to let the text go. The star follows our auto-recovery safety net, which runs for every tab all the time, so a tab wearing one always has real work behind it.
If I close a starred tab and choose Don't Save, is the text gone?
You have five seconds to change your mind. A panel reading "Discarded «Foo.swift» — restore?" appears at the bottom of the window with a Restore button, and one click brings the tab back with its content, star and all. Let the panel lapse and the discard stands, which is what you asked for. Anything you had already saved is untouched either way.
Does an untitled tab with a star have a file somewhere?
Its text is held for you on your Mac from your first keystroke by our auto-recovery safety net, which is why an untitled tab can be starred and still survive a crash. Nothing appears in the Finder until you say so: ⌘S opens Save As, and the file lands with the name you type, in the folder you choose.