How to disable autosave?

[HerbEppel 2]

No doubt this has been discussed before but I couldn't find it in the archive, so apologies in advance for repetition ...

I keep making inadvertent unwanted changes in my notes and would therefore like to disable autosave but don't see how.

Surely it must be possible to disable autosave, no? 🤔

Thank you.

[Dave-in-Decatur 1,997]

Could you say more about what device this is happening on (Android, iPhone, Mac, Windows, Web....)? Generally speaking Evernote is now designed to sync everything automatically and more or less constantly. The only way to disable this would be to go offline. Once the note is finalized the way you want it, then go back online so it can sync.

[Boot17 529]

Nope. Not possible to disable auto-save. Even if you go offline and make an accidental change -- it is going to change it and then sync it once you come back online like Dave mentioned.

To guard against accidental updates on mobile only you can go to Settings -> Notes -> Edit protection and turn that setting on for all notes. You then have to click the blue 'Edit' button or double-tap the note to make a change.

There are several forum threads requesting a feature for Desktop and Web Evernote to have an Edit protection mode like mobile -- or to be able to set individual notes or notebooks to 'Read-Only' -- but those features don't exist now. Evernote has made no mention if they plan to add that in the future AFAIK.

Best you can do for Desktop and Web is to 'Undo' the inadvertent change, but if you only notice it later after you've navigated away from the note and come back then you'd have to restore the note to a previous version in the history (but you have to have a Personal subscription or better for that).

[HerbEppel 2]

2 hours ago, Boot17 said:

Nope. Not possible to disable auto-save. Even if you go offline and make an accidental change -- it is going to change it and then sync it once you come back online like Dave mentioned.

To guard against accidental updates on mobile only you can go to Settings -> Notes -> Edit protection and turn that setting on for all notes. You then have to click the blue 'Edit' button or double-tap the note to make a change.

There are several forum threads requesting a feature for Desktop and Web Evernote to have an Edit protection mode like mobile -- or to be able to set individual notes or notebooks to 'Read-Only' -- but those features don't exist now. Evernote has made no mention if they plan to add that in the future AFAIK.

Best you can do for Desktop and Web is to 'Undo' the inadvertent change, but if you only notice it later after you've navigated away from the note and come back then you'd have to restore the note to a previous version in the history (but you have to have a Personal subscription or better for that).

Thanks for your comprehensive and helpful reply 👍

I've now enabled "Edit protection" on my phone, which will certainly help to avoid 'accidents' in future.

Astonishing that such a basic option isn't available for Desktop, but thanks for the reminder of the 'Undo' option and indeed for mentioning the "Note history" feature, which I wasn't aware of.

[Dave-in-Decatur 1,997]

14 hours ago, Boot17 said:

Not possible to disable auto-save. Even if you go offline and make an accidental change -- it is going to change it and then sync it once you come back online like Dave mentioned.

I was envisioning going offline and staying offline throughout the editing process, until the note was in the condition that you want it to be in, and only then going back online so that this form (and not all the provisionals and maybes and oopses during the process) would sync.