Dot in red close button for unsaved files - no longer a feature of Mac OS

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Dot in red close button for unsaved files - no longer a feature of Mac OS

It used to be that unsaved files would have a black dot in the red "close button" at the top left of the window to indicate that they were unsaved. This persisted even when Pages and other apps gained autosave, until you named and saved a file for the first time, when the X would appear in the red button.

This seems no longer to be the case. As soon as you create a new file (eg in Pages), the red button has an X in it. True, it prompts you to save it if you try to close it, but if there's a crash you're still likely screwed, and with nothing to remind you, while you're working, that you haven't yet saved. Is this feature gone? Anyone know when it disappeared?

Posted on Nov 3, 2022 9:11 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

67,090 points

Nov 3, 2022 9:55 AM in response to mattfrombeacon

I can't say when this changed.

It is clearly related to auto-save.

The black dot still is present in applications that don't implement auto-save (or at least not using the native API for it), like Excel, or TextMate.

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2022 6:19 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks! I wondered if perhaps Apple had implemented an autosave on file creation, and created a new Pages document, typed some text, and pulled the power on the machine. On restart, Pages opened back up, it even opened a window with that file name ("Untitled 2") but the file was blank. So I guess still no autosave until you save it the first time.

It's annoying that they took away the dot for new files, because the X in the red button now implies "it's cool, we're autosaving this".

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Answer 3

Nov 4, 2022 8:01 AM in response to Barney-15E

Yes, but that only applies after you name and save a file the very first time. Until you do that first save, while the file is "Untitled" and kind of floating in the ether, it's not saved anywhere. This has always been the case, but my point is that the appearance of the red button has changed over the years. Used to be a dot before that first save; now it's a cross at all times.

Edit: I just did another test. Here's the new behavior. If you are working on a file for at least five minutes, the document will indeed be autosaved before you do that first manual save. After a power crash, once you reboot, the file comes back up automatically with its content (in Monterey, anyway). I didn't wait long enough the first test, you need a full five minutes (the normal autosave period).