Any way to turn OFF that stupid saving of multiple copies of documents?!

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Level 1

50 points

Any way to turn OFF that stupid saving of multiple copies of documents?!

I would love to know who thought it was a good idea to add this WITHOUT a way to turn it off!! So when you're in a text document (or any other kind of file that you can make changes in) you can go into the Time Machine icon on the status bar, select "Enter Time Machine" and there will be multiple versions of your document from various states auto saved so that you can go back to a previous version of your document for whatever reason. This can be a great thing, EXCEPT when you have no choice in that matter!

I DO NOT NEED a hundred copies of every single document I have on my computer because I happened to do a lot of tweeking to minor lines of text or make numerous very minor changes. And before anyone asks (because I am SO sick of answering this question twenty times a day) I DO NOT have a time machine hard drive OR Time Capsule connected to my computer in any way at all, (under normal usage. I do have a Time Machine hard drive I manually connect every few days to back up my computer, I just don't ALWAYS have it connected because it's a laptop) these multiple copies are being saved into my computer and taking up valuable hard drive space and there's no way to shut off this feature. I just called into Apple and the only thing they said was "Well it doesn't take up very much hard drive space" completely failing to see the point that I don't want it to take up ANY space because, again, I DON'T NEED A HUNDRED COPIES OF EVERY DOCUMENT IN MY COMPUTER!!!

Does anyone have any idea how to shut off this "feature" because it is utterly stupid. in System Settings -> General I checked "Ask to keep changes when closing documents" and I selected "None" in the "Show Recent Items for Documents, Apps and Servers" but it still saves multiple copies of my documents. Can anyone help me figure out how to shut this off and delete the multiple copies? Not all of us are hysterical computer users opening up random documents and slapping the keyboard with our open palms requiring the ability to go back to multiple pages of the same document, some of us actually KNOW how to open up something, make a change and save it. We don't need the computer to constantly save multiple copies of everything we do so there needs to be SOME way to shut this off. What about my final cut, Aperture, Motion and any other program that make files? Am I going to have a thousand copies of every single video I ever edit from this point on? (cause anyone who does video editing knows there will be MANY tweeks and changes to those) What about Pages, Numbers or Keynote? How much room on my hard drive is going to be wasted storing hundreds of copies of hundreds of documents every time I wanted to change a graph colour slightly, or add tax into a spreadsheet, or change a decimal point in a presentation? Adding this without a way to shut it off was the most ridiculous thing I've seen! Thanks to anyone that can help.

Mountain Lion-OTHER, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 6:38 AM

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Answer 1

CT

Level 7

23,987 points

Jul 30, 2012 6:44 AM in response to Howmander

Wow.

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Answer 2

Jul 30, 2012 6:47 AM in response to Howmander

Just wanted to clear something up here. You do not have 100 copies of every document on your computer.

The updates are "delta" updates (i.e. just the changes in each document) so it takes up very little space.

Other than that, I'll echo what CT says: Wow.

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Answer 3

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Jul 30, 2012 6:51 AM in response to Howmander

Actually, there are two mechanisms by which Mountain Lion does this, both of which are on by default (for laptops; only one of which is on by default for desktops).

You mention going into the Time Machine icon in the menubar? Good news - that one's easy to turn off. 🙂

To do so, you need to open Terminal.app (Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and copy/paste this line into the Terminal window:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

press 'return' on your keyboard and enter your Admin password. Note that the password does not echo to the screen, so type carefully.

The second mechanism is what Apple call 'Versions'. The bad news is you can't turn Versions off; the good news is it's only enabled on certain Apple apps like Preview, TextEdit, XCode, Pages, Numbers, Keynote etc. The only way to avoid Versions, therefore, is to use alternatives such as Skim (for Preview), Tincta (for TextEdit) and LibreOffice for Pages, Numbers, Keynote (alas, I don't know of an alternative for XCode).

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Answer 4

Kurt Lang

Level 9

57,834 points

Jul 30, 2012 6:54 AM in response to Howmander

By text documents, I assume you're using TextEdit? There's a few ways to "fix" it.

1) If you have Snow Leopard, you can use its version of TextEdit in Mountain Lion. Delete ML's version of TextEdit by doing a Get Info and changing all permissions to Read/Write. You should then be able to move it to the Trash. Then put SL's version of TextEdit somewhere in your user account. It needs to go there so Disk Utility can't wreck it during a Repair Permissions.

2) Use a different text editor that doesn't use Autosave/Versions and make it the default editor. An excellent one is the free TextWrangler.

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Answer 5

softwater

Level 5

5,556 points

Jul 30, 2012 6:59 AM in response to William Lloyd

Not quite true. Local snapshots are not delta copies, they are full copies of items that have changed as in TM. Items that have not changed are just given hardlinks to a previous version each time TM backs up.

As for Versions, the Apple documentation here is somewhat misleading. If you want to see what I mean, log in as root and inspect your /.DocumentRevisions-V100 folder (where Versions are stored). You'll see that there is actually a full copy of every original file as well as deltas.

While Versions and Local Snapshots may not take up much space for text-based documents, they can start to accumulate sizable real esate when you're dealing with image and video files that have multiple minor changes.

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Answer 6

Aug 1, 2012 3:20 PM in response to Howmander

Ignore the smug remarks from the mindless zombies, and give the following guide a try:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4166543?tstart=0

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Answer 7

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Aug 1, 2012 4:16 PM in response to softwater

softwater wrote:

Not quite true. Local snapshots are not delta copies, they are full copies of items that have changed as in TM. Items that have not changed are just given hardlinks to a previous version each time TM backs up.

Not if they're files made by apps using Versions. In that case, they are just pointers to the Versions.

As for Versions, the Apple documentation here is somewhat misleading. If you want to see what I mean, log in as root and inspect your /.DocumentRevisions-V100 folder (where Versions are stored). You'll see that there is actually a full copy of every original file as well as deltas.

No, there aren't. That's an illusion. Only changed "chunks" are stored in the Versions database. But it's done at the file system level, so if you display a Version, the whole file is reassembled, as with the Versions browser. See http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/ (scroll down to the Document Revisions section).

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