This file might be edited to add at later points.
When you start AutoSave for the first time, it will automatically open its settings window. There, you can specify which programs to interact with and generally modify its settings.
Once you click OK, AutoSave minimizes into the notification area and pick up its work. Also in the settings window, you can tell AutoSave how silent to be when its in the background.
Although it isn't really necessary to shut down AutoSave if you don't use it, you can always do so by right-clicking its notification icon and choosing Shutdown AutoSave.
If you want AutoSave to always start when you log in to Windows, you can create an auto-start entry on the More options page of the settings window.
If you want AutoSave to always start when you open a specific application, you can create a Connected Shortcut.
No. Unfortunately, AutoSave is a Windows-based application.
Using Wine, AutoSave crashed more often than not, so that won't help either. (last checked: July 2014)
When its running, AutoSave will wait silently until a given time (5 minutes by default) has passed.
If this time has passed, it will look at the window that's currently active. If this window's title contains a certain phrase, AutoSave will simulate you pressing ctrl+s on your keyboard, which usually makes the active application save your current progress.
This phrase by which AutoSave filters windows is what you enter on the Target windows page of the settings window.
The windows of some modern applications merge don't have a title bar like most other applications. They might merge it with a menu bar, a tab bar, or do completely without it.
The Target windows page of the settings window contains, at the very bottom, a line saying Title of the window under the mouse cursor. Below it, you'll find the title of any window you point at using the mouse, even if the window doesn't have a visible title bar.
Various apps from the Adobe Creative suite have caused some confusion during the beta test of AutoSave. Let's take, for the sake of an example, Adobe Photoshop.
When there is no file opened in Photoshop, its (invisible) title will be Adobe Photoshop. Once you open a file, however, the title will change to that file's name, e.g. test file.psd.
This means, for AutoSave to work with such a program, you should specify
the file-type extension on AutoSave's Target windows page.
For example, if you want to use AutoSave with Adobe Photoshop,
you'd write .psd, including the period.
Another solution would be using Connected Shortcuts.
You might have two art programs with very different titles and want to use AutoSave with both of them.
In this case, you can go to the Target windows page of the settings window
and check the box named This is a regular expression.
Then, you type both window titles in the proper text box, and separate them
with a pipe character.
For example, if you want to use AutoSave both with GIMP and Microsoft Paint,
you'd type paint|gimp.
Keep in mind that, when the regular expressions checkbox is checked, some characters (e.g. the period) have a special meaning. If you want to use them literally, you have to write a backslash in front of them.
For example, if you want to use AutoSave both with GIMP and Adobe Photoshop,
you'd check This is a regular expression and type \.psd|gimp into
the text box above.
Note how there is a backslash in front of the period; if it weren't, the period
would mean absolutely every character may be in this place.
Regular Expressions ("regex" for short) are a kind of mini-language with which you can specify certain patterns that you are searching for in a text.
AutoSave can use regular expressions for title matching if a regular old "the title must contain this string of letters" doesn't do it for you.
The Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet contain many tutorials surrounding regular expressions, but what most people would need when using AutoSave is:
gimp|sai -|paintmatches a window if its title containsgimp,sai -orpaint;you (are|were)matches bothyou areandyou were;[0-9]matches any digit;[0-9]{1,3}matches any number that contains 1, 2, or 3 digits.
A Connected Shortcut is a desktop shortcut file that opens both AutoSave and an application of your choice at the same time. AutoSave will then only target this one application and will automatically shut down when you close this application.
No. When you click a Connected Shortcut, AutoSave will target only the app that you started it with. This mode is completely independent from the normal mode (where AutoSave targets windows by caption) and it uses a different mechanism.
They overwrite the normal settings.
Suppose you create a Connected Shortcut and specify a custom interval. When you start AutoSave with this Connected Shortcut, all its settings will be as if you started it normally -- except of the interval, which will be as specified when creating the Connected Shortcut.
Keep in mind that if you use custom settings in a Connected Shortcut, you cannot easily change them afterwards. You'd have to create a new Connected Shortcut with new, different custom settings.
There are various reasons why a user could be unable to drag an application into or out of the Create a Connected Shortcut dialog.
If this is the case, you can double-click the boxes in the dialog to open an Open or Save dialog respectively.
You can also use the Tab key on your keyboard to focus these boxes and
press Enter for the same effect.
Yes, but they won't work very well. Because of the way Connected Shortcuts work, you can expect the connected art program to open in a new taskbar item instead of using the shortcut's one.
AutoSave saves its settings and other things, like Connected Shortcuts or and auto-start entry, on your harddrive. Although the disk space these changes occupy on your disk are negligibly small, you should delete them if you want to remove AutoSave from your system.
To do that, go to the Remove & Uninstall page of AutoSave's
settings window and click the proper button.
Follow the wizard and, when it's completed, delete your copy of AutoSave.exe.
The Revert Connected Shortcuts page of the AutoSave Uninstall wizard contains a list of automatically found Connected Shortcuts. There might be cases where it doesn't find all shortcuts on your system.
If that's the case, you can drag a Connected Shortcut into this list and drop it there. If AutoSave recognizes it as a Connected Shortcut, it will be added to the list.
The Revert Connected Shortcuts page of the AutoSave Uninstall wizard contains a list of automatically found Connected Shortcuts.
To remove a file from this list, select it and press the Del key.
AutoSave saves all its settings on a per-user basis.
If there are multiple users on your computer (i.e. multiple user acounts)
using the same AutoSave.exe file, everyone of them has to delete their
settings before the exe file should be deleted.
Because of this, it might be advisable for each user account to have their own copy of AutoSave.