Now that there’s an “automatic shutdown after X minutes” function, for those of us who don’t remember to shut the program down I guess there’s a “solution” to the automatic backup request (in traditional Mac-backwards-fashion?)
Why it’s considered LESS intrusive and MORE usable to shut down the whole program instead of just making a backup is totally beyond me…
One thinks it should be possible to do both or either?
Why not set yourself a keyboard shortcut for “Back Up Now”. Users with big projects would be utterly frustrated if they were in mid-writing-flow when the automatic back-up you propose kicked in, shutting them out of working while it did the job of backing up the whole project. From the menu or a shortcut you can do it when it’s convenient for you!
Mark
Sorry about the confusion.
You need to understand how the shutdown function works to understand my suggestion. It, of course, shuts down after X minutes of inactivity. I lost that word in the post above.
My suggestion is an inactivity delay. Not backup after X minutes. Backup after X minutes of inactivity.
I.e. if you’re working on the project, you’re not inactive, ergo no backups.
And, there’s a function for shutting the program down after inactivity. Which, if it happened after X minutes would be even worse. So the functionality is pretty much already there.
If I had this function I’d set the inactivity delay for 4 hours… which means backing up the project once every night (when I’ve been sleeping for several hours.)
Now I’ve set the program to backup (on shutdown I think) and to shut down after 4 hours of inactivity. It’s about the same as an automatic backup but feels a bit awkward and backward.
Wait. What? You just complained that having a backup automatically run when the program quits is too intrusive because it requires shutting the program down, but then you propose an inactivity delay of hours? This scenario is why the autoquit command exists: as soon as you’ve shown by inactivity that you’re well and truly done working, Scrivener quietly shuts down, runs a backup, and patiently waits for your return.
Katherine
Mmmm confusion.
Yes, shutting the program down to get backups gets the job done.
But you lose undo history when doing that.
And I think it’s a funny way to do it.
Having the program stay open is just asking for syncing issues.
And if you’re up against Apple’s stingy storage limits, Time Machine is useless. Maybe if you have a TB, 256 GB is useless.
Excuse me? You can buy whatever size external Time Machine drive you want, from any company you want. Mine is a 4 TB Seagate drive.
Katherine
YMMV, but I’m not using “Undo” to roll back hours of work anyway. If I haven’t “undone” something within a matter of minutes, Scrivener’s other options are much more likely to give useful results.
Katherine
Perhaps the disagreement here is intended usage. The automatic quit function, if I am not mistaken, was developed to avoid the “project open on another machine” sync problem as @Devinganger suggests. The “backup after inactivity” that @erk suggests addresses a different one—the “leaving the project open for weeks results in no backups when something goes wrong” problem, which can happen whether or not one syncs. Automatic quit addresses the second case as a lesser included function, when Scrivener->Preferences->Backup “Automatic backup on project close” is enabled.
I must admit that having undo history intact in the morning is not a motivator for me. By morning, I have only the vaguest idea of what I did yesterday in what order, let alone whether I want to undo something. 
I have my Scrivener set to auto-quit after 2 hours, which I adjust according to syncing needs, but which ensures at least one daily backup. OTOH, if I’m not syncing it would be nice to have Scrivener stay open.
So, @erk, you have a way forward, but I can understand that if you really like to leave Scrivener open and sync is not something you do, the auto-quit function seems like overkill. Another possibility is to turn on the “backup with each manual save” option in Scrivener->Preferences->Backup but that involves remembering to hit command-s periodically (a non-starter for me, at least, unless I can figure a way to automate it. I haven’t.)
Sometimes I get frustrated in the Wish List forum with people who seem to be telling me that I don’t want a feature I want. Sometimes, yes, there’s a function I didn’t know about that does just what I want, but more often I want something different, as you do. The good news is that L&L do monitor the Wish List, and so your request has been noted (@kewms is L&L Tech Support.) Sometimes I get an answer of “no” in the forum, but the next time Scrivener’s updated, my request had been implemented. Don’t give up hope.
External USB drives fail regularly. Data corruption can occur easily if the cable is pulled out or the drive improperly unmounted. Then there’s all the Apple Support posts about Time Machine not working properly. The popularity of data recovery software. Clean room labs. These are not rare occurrences either.
ps: You better get another drive, If your external drive fails, you’ll be out of luck.
There are a few support posts about Time Machine not working correctly out of the tens of millions of people using TM on a regular basis. The most common Time Machine failure is in fact user failure. I have personally assisted dozens of people to use TM to drill back to a specific moment to recover data they thought was gone for all time.
Time Machine is one of the most robust backup systems out there. Yes, like any system, you can have hard drive failures and user screw ups, but as part of a robust backup process it is about as good as tech gets.
That said, there are other options. I use a combination of TM and Carbon Copy.
All of the hazards you cite are equally relevant to any backup, whether created by Scrivener or not.
In addition to Time Machine, I have a second external backup (actually a half-dozen rotating drives), use an offsite “cloud” backup service, and have copies of critical projects on multiple machines and in a second “cloud.” I think I’m okay.
Katherine
True.
My usage scenario is that the program sits open for a long time on my desktop, but when leaving home (which might imply writing on the iPad on the train) I shut the machine down. (Or, well, now I’m auto shutting Scrivener down since doing it the old way could leave you without backups for weeks…)
However, whenever I’ve happened to have both desktop and iPad open (which is quite seldom) while editing the project I haven’t had any sync issues,
Maybe the low frequency of that event is the key to my success…
You don’t need a backup every 2 minutes. Scrivener is NOT unstable enough to worry over it, unless your operating system/hard disk is unstable … in which case all those many, many backups are not worth the bits they’re printed on. If the machine is unstable, everything on it is unstable.
All you need is a zip backup on close + a backup of that backup. Put backups in Dropbox or back them up in some other way, then close Scrivener every once in a while, and you’re fine.
I use Dropbox, Time Machine, and ChronoSync, but in over 8 years using Scrivener, only ONCE have I needed to retrieve work from anywhere but a zip backup on the hard drive. Then, it was a zip backup in Dropbox. Even if you delete zip backups, Dropbox holds onto them more than long enough.
Itäs also possible to set Scrivener to backup on Manual Save, so if you know you’ve been writing a lot of new stuff and don’t want to close the project, just hit Save and you’ll get an extra backup.
Alas, make sure you adjust the number of possible backups or you’ll quickly delete older backups.
I apologize for the delay.
““I do not understand the necessity for the hostility and abusive language being used here, it is entirely unnecessary…””
It was sarcasm. It’s called humor.
But my statements still stand. Most users are being restricted by the assumption that those with large projects will be hampered because they will not know how to change the auto-backup settings to their liking.
Sad so much effort in the thread was in response to other posters mis-reading what i wrote.
Many users actually don’t know that the automatic backups exist, much less how to change the relevant settings.
Still, in the very post you quoted here, Ioa explained that your requested feature is unusable for “normal” projects, not just unusually large ones. Back in 2018, in response to your original feature request, he noted that your request was actually implemented during the Scrivener 3 beta, and explained why turned out to be unusable.
Katherine