Saving & autosave

Save vs Save As

Octostitch saves your editable design — objects, paths, stitch settings, colours, references and hoop — in its own .ostch format. This is different from exporting a machine file: keep the .ostch as your master copy so you can re-edit later, and export PES/DST/etc. copies to sew.

Action	Shortcut	What it does
Save	Ctrl + S	Write back to the current .ostch file (prompts for a location the first time)
Save As	Ctrl + Shift + S	Write to a new .ostch file

Saving requires an active licence. If you start a new design, open another file, or quit with unsaved changes, Octostitch prompts you to Save, discard (Don’t save) or Cancel so you don’t lose work.

Autosave & crash recovery

Octostitch protects your work in the background:

• Every 30 seconds, if the design has changed, it writes a recovery copy to the app’s config folder (written atomically, so a crash mid-save can’t corrupt it).
• On the next launch after a crash or an unexpected quit, it offers to Restore the recovered work (naming the original file and how long ago it was autosaved) or Discard it.

The recovery prompt names the file it found and when it was last autosaved, then offers Restore or Discard.

• After any clean Save or New, the recovery copy is cleared — so a normal session never leaves a file behind to nag you about.

The recovery files live alongside Octostitch’s other app data (on Windows, under %APPDATA%\octostitch\recovery).