I lost all my progress on my file, how do I get it back?

[Baboobraz]

I was working on something and pressed ctrl+s and then accidentally pressed w before letting go of ctrl. Then it went back to the home thing and when I reopened the file, all my work was gone except what was in the playlist, and there were blue lines with numbers on the area below them project window that wasn’t there before. I tried to restart the program and it didn’t help. The file seemed normal though since I could still drag clips from the playlist into the timeline. Is there a way to get my work back? I checked for autosave files as well, but I couldn’t find any recent files.

[jonray]

Hi @Baboobraz,
You might like to read this post:

Auto Save feature

After two hours of producing one of my best videos thus far Shotcut “Not Responding” and I lost all of that time. I learned a very valuable lesson however I keep forgetting to hit the save button while I am in creative mode. I am accustomed to other products such as word, etc in which there is an autosave feature. Is there an autosave mechanism in Shotcut so this doesn’t happen again? Thanks.

I quote from @shotcut’s comment in that thread:
“From the menu, choose Settings > App Data Directory > Show… > autosaves. Sort that view in your file manager by Date modified to look for recently created files. You might find it in there”.

More about the app data directory here:

App Data Directory

The App Data Directory is where Shotcut stores: automatically saved project files in the autosave sub-folder builtin and saved generator, filter, and export presets in the presets sub-folder custom video modes in the profiles sub-folder thumbnails and waveforms in the thumbnails sub-folder non-project-specific proxy videos and images in the proxies sub-folder favorited transition wipes in the transitions sub-folder db.sqlite3 is a database where thumbnails and audio levels for waveforms are sa…

[Baboobraz]

I found the autosaves folder already, but everything in there was from back in September and not this current project. I’m re-editing it now so its ok, and I didn’t have too much done anyways.

[jonray]

OK, glad you are sorted.