Losing hours of work due to a crash is frustrating. Fortunately, Blender has a built-in Auto Save feature. This guide will show you how to enable and configure it to protect your projects.
Launch Blender and navigate to the top menu bar. Click on Edit and then select Preferences from the dropdown menu.
In the Blender Preferences window, find and click on the Save & Load tab on the left-hand side.
Look for the Auto Save section. Click the checkbox next to the Auto Save option to turn it on.
Set the Timer (mins) value to determine how often Blender saves a backup. A common setting is between 2 and 5 minutes. A lower value means more frequent saves.
Tips for Using Blender's Auto Save
If Blender crashes, you can recover your work by going to File > Recover > Auto Save.... This opens a list of recent backup files.
You can find or change the location of your auto-save files under Preferences > File Paths > Temporary Files.
Auto Save is a backup, not a replacement for manual saving. Always save your project with Ctrl + S after making significant changes.
For very large scenes, frequent auto-saves might cause a slight pause. If this happens, consider increasing the timer interval to 10 or 15 minutes.
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