Auto saving of parts I'm writing

[Ariane-B]

Is Your Feature Request Related to a Problem?

Just now, I was writing a post, and I was almost done. But I wanted to cross-reference a few things, so I searched in a Discord discussion, and checked one of my Firefox tabs. Then I came back to Thunder to finish... But the app went back to the home screen. I guess I ran out of RAM. I lost all the text I'd written, and now I need to start over.

Feature Description

I wish the app had some sort of auto-save feature that would bring me back to the form I was writing in and restore what I was writing if the app gets closed for any reason.

Alternative Solutions

If there's a way to make the app "sticky" so that the OS can't kill it anytime the user is writing a post/comment, I guess that might work too, but that sounds a little extreme to me.

Additional Context

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S22+.

[hjiangsu]

Thanks for the report - this is likely related to #1607!

[micahmo]

Just FYI, we do have post and comment draft auto-save functionality. It explicitly saves when you navigate away from creating a new post/comment without actually posting it. But it is also supposed to auto-save in the background every 10 seconds, even if the app ultimately gets killed in the background.

thunder/lib/src/features/post/presentation/pages/create_post_page.dart

Lines 313 to 320 in b6cd3e8

	_draftTimer = Timer.periodic(const Duration(seconds: 10), (Timer t) {
	Draft draft = _generateDraft();
	if (draft.isPostNotEmpty && saveDraft && _draftDiffersFromEdit(draft)) {
	Draft.upsertDraft(draft);
	} else {
	Draft.deleteDraft(draftType, draftExistingId, draftReplyId);
	}
	});

@Ariane-B I'm assuming you already tried going back to the same community to make the post again? If the draft existed, it should've auto-populated for you. So maybe something went wrong there. 😭

[Ariane-B]

@Ariane-B I'm assuming you already tried going back to the same community to make the post again? If the draft existed, it should've auto-populated for you. So maybe something went wrong there. 😭

Yeah. I in fact rewrote the whole thing. But sadly there was no draft to help me out.

The most likely possibility I can see is that the app got killed before the 10 seconds were up. I had my references right there, so it really was just a quick dip into Firefox and Discord.

I don't know if that's a thing, but I guess the ideal version of that functionality would be that it saves as soon as the app loses foreground status or as soon as the text field loses focus.

And maybe reopening the relevant page if a draft is detected? UX of this last point would need some reflection.