Is there complete 'autosave disable' in IntelliJ (Android Studio)?

I cannot say anything about Android Studio, but in IntelliJ there are settings in "Appearance & Behavior => System Settings".
There is a Synchronization header where you can enable/disable saving on tab deactivation and after a specific idle time.

However I have not found a way to switch off saving before make/compile.

Having said that: Why the heck do you want to disable auto-saving???
What benefit is there?

See http://stackoverflow.com/a/7377886/104891 .

@Serge:  Yeah, I had read that thread at StackOverfloooow.  Now at re-reading,I do notice
where someone unequivocably says:

"Automatic save is the core design feature, we believe that it's much more efficient and productive than manual save.
There is no way to disable this behavior or enable any confirmations."

Hmm...that seems to say that I'm dead-in-the-water.

@Stephan:  >>> Why would one want to disable auto-save?

Ok, I can think of two scenarios...they've happened to me recently. And, I'm sure others can think
of other scenarios where they;d want to disable auto-save (or to achieve it with a 'bail-out' key-sequence).

(1) Say you want to cut and paste a section of code and move it down or up in your file.
Or, you 'select' a section of code to indent.  Basically, anytime you highlight some code
in prep for doing something.
Guess what happens if instead of the tab key or before you've pasted a section being moved,
you hit some key (e.g. numeric or any char or whatever.  YIKES..not that whole section of
code gets deleted..
If you could have had 'auto-save' disabled, you could just abandon those changes.  In present
behavior, the only recovery I can find is to learn all the actions needed to find and choose
the file to recovery from 'backup-list'.
(2) Another scenario:  Say I;ve got 3 or 4 tabs visible, and I make some edit (that I want to
keep), in tab-A.  In that same session, I had gone off and made some test changes to
some other file (e.g.to see the visible effect of changes to an XML file..  Yada, yada.

So, my BRAIN knows (tho it temporarily had forgotton the later changes.  So, when
I now click on 'do a build', under my scenario, as I see each modified file PROMPTED
FOR, I can bail out of one and keep the other, etc.

So, whoever (at JetBrains?) is claiming
    "we believe that it's much more efficient and productive than manual save."
is just FLATLY INCORRECT ! !
(Their brains are NOT 'jet-propelled...they've gone into reverse, and the jet has crashed!)

My brain ALWAYS trumps what their robotic-algorithm's knowledge of which files
I may or may not want to keep,

ALT-S is similarly BADLY DESIGNED.  It, too, closes ALL modified files in one
fell swoop. rather than asking one-at-a-time whether I want all the files to get updated.
I want/need some other short-cut sequence to force it to ASK ME, one-at-a-time.

Lastly, what is REALLY pissing me off, is that, if I recall correctly, they ONCE had
this feature of asking.  If so, then some knuckle-head there, talked the others into
this RIDICULOUS idea that "we know better than you do you".

NO YOU DON"T !

Please put back (or implement) SOME way we can get the ask-about each-file!

Why not just Undo the change you didn't want?

Seems to me other tools have brainwashed you into thinking the need to explicitly "save" is a feature.

Undo (Ctrl-Z) is so fundamental, you shouldn't really complain about having to learn that shortcut.

Then there are a couple of things that can help you:
* version control (no excuse not to use)
* shelve
* local history

Again, nothing sophisticated, but pretty basic.

Maybe IDEA just isn't for you.

Anyway, I am out of here.

>>> Why not undo the changes you don't want.

I'm surprised that you could even think that in all cases, I should need to go back and
undo stuff.  It depends how how long ago I made all the changes and possibly to
how many other various files.


>>> ...other tools have brain-washed you...

That too is patently ridiculous.  So, now I'm the idiot who is asking for a perfectly
reasonable feature (that most of the other IDEs in the world have had for decades).

Let me turn this discussion around.  It's all about CHOICES.  Give people the choice
which of two algorithms to use when it comes time to close out an editing session!

I might even had modified 5 files, and get called out to meeting and come back two
hours later.  So, tho I may have forgotten exactly what changes I had made to
how many files, I can just neatly walk thru 5 prompts and either OK or bail out
on each file's changes.

Again...you seem to NOT be able to imagine enough use-cases to realize that
most all the other IDEs have correctly to have concluded that there is a use-case
for offering the CHOICE of disabling autosave.

(You may as well giving up on your silly 'refutations' of with 'who would ever want
to not have autosave-disable.  These notions are just not washing with me.)

Some of you autosave lovers are forgetting something crucial. It DOESN'T MATTER if you love it or not. It's none of your business if I want to disable a feature I HATE. Btw. I'm not the only one who ends up using capital letters to describe the feelings towards this feature. It destroys my routine. I want it gone. Once I install it on MY computer, it is MY tool. I expect it to behave like I want it to, not how YOU like it. Are you understanding the difference yet? Me != You. Make it optional.

And I want an indicator for unsaved files back too!

Similar situation:
I happen to hate Macs. I don't hate people who love Macs, but I hate the people who try to tell me that I should use a Mac. They've tried... the bastards. Actually I think it's often the Apple people who are the first to tell everyone else to conform to their magical way of using their computing toys.

Similar situation:
When I leave my apartment I check if I have the keys. Some of you might prefer your key to be automatically magnetized to your foreheads when you leave your house, but I don't. I want to grab my keys manually.

Similar situation:
I install my roll of toilet paper so that the next leaf is hanging over the roll, not hanging against the wall. Some people prefer to do it the other way around. World war III would start on the very day when people would be forced to adapt to the other 50% way of installing the toilet paper roll.


What is my point? Quit belittling the way other people want to do things. It's none of your business. Oh and fix the damn autosave.

You can enable indicator here:



See also https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEABKL-6460 .

Why/when should I want to disable auto-save?

Right now, because I am writing Grails code, and it takes a lot of time to compile and start, so I want to work during those 30 seconds but instead I am banned from touching the keyboard because IntelliJ will save the file and usually break the compile, and sometimes the spring live reload. I imagine I'll have a similar problem if I use nodemon to reload nodejs when a file changes or if I use livereload.com to reload my web page. Maybe only I have this problem? No, I don't think I am the only person that has 2 monitors and is addicted to automatic reload in the server and browser. And don't get me wrong, I'm ok with the other auto-save that I can disable.

Bottom line I don't like to wait idle for seconds, that's the main reason I left eclipse and searched for something better.

My mistake for using a framework so heavy?

Maybe, but I like the framework doing a lot of work for me, even if it means that I need a huge machine, btw the same answer I give when asked why I use IntellJ instead of vim

In the end I still love IntelliJ but this problem it is eating so much of the productivity gains that I got with all the other features that it is a very significant and painful problem