idea Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks in ArcGIS Online Ideas

Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

PaulHoefflerGISS — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 20:23:44 GMT

ArcGIS Online Notebooks do not auto-save, which is problematic as kernels are often disconnected, cannot re-connect, and then changes cannot be saved.

Auto-save should be enabled by default for ArcGIS Online Notebooks, consistent with the Jupyter Notebook environment deployed alongside of ArcGIS Pro.

This is also not enabled in ArcGIS Pro Notebooks, logged with Esri Technical Support as #ENH-000131883 [Enhancement] Allow the use of the autosave feature in ArcGIS Notebooks.

Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

PaulHoefflerGISS — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 17:06:33 GMT

ArcGIS Online Notebooks do not auto-save, which is problematic as kernels are often disconnected, cannot re-connect, and then changes cannot be saved.

Auto-save should be enabled by default for ArcGIS Online Notebooks, consistent with the Jupyter Notebook environment deployed alongside of ArcGIS Pro.

This is also not enabled in ArcGIS Pro Notebooks, logged with Esri Technical Support as #ENH-000131883 [Enhancement] Allow the use of the autosave feature in ArcGIS Notebooks.

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

FranklinBailey — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 17:49:08 GMT

This is a great idea. Even just an option to turn auto-save on would be welcome. Tired of losing code because of kernel disconnects.

It looks like ESRI had issues with Notebooks auto-saving upon creation, so maybe enable auto-save after the first manual save to prevent content from becoming cluttered with new opened "Untitled Notebooks"

https://community.esri.com/thread/241533-notebooks-autosave

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

KoryKramer — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 20:22:27 GMT

Autosave for Notebooks in ArcGIS Pro was implemented in version 2.7 as indicated in the enhancement request cited in the original idea: ENH-000131883. Moving this to the ArcGIS Online idea exchange and associating with ENH-000132616 which is open for ArcGIS Online.

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

PullarDavid — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 07:59:41 GMT

This would be a much appreciated enhancement. I lecture at University and many students have been caught out with the 20 minute time out while looking up stuff on the Internet; with no autosave they lose their work. This is occurring often for all students … they even have a saying ‘idle coding is the devil of AGO’ (i.e. variation on the idle hands).

David Pullar University of Queensland

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

fklotz — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 17:13:30 GMT

PLEASE! And if not auto-save, at least allow a method to save the notebook if the kernel has died.

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

JoeBullard — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 11:31:16 GMT

I've no idea how this is still an issue several years later, it's a massive nuisance as you're forced to copy changes made out of the notebook then back in again.

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

TrevorWilkerson — Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:23:09 GMT

I cannot agree more. It seems even that if code is being edited but not ran, you can hit the timeout. If that happens, the entire time you spend editing the code is lost.15 years ago, we are all accustomed to clicking save every 2 minutes on whatever project, but in today's day and age everything is auto saved so that habit has died. It is a very frustrating issue.

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

DebSF — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 09:57:39 GMT

Please can this be considered. It's really annoying as the kernel disconnects when I'm off doing something else then realise I haven't saved because a lot of things auto-save these days.

Re: Autosave ArcGIS Online Notebooks

rmcooper_wcpss — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:16:08 GMT

This is very frustrating from a UX standpoint. I just got pulled away from some work I was doing only to come back to all the code I'd been working on could not be recovered. By now, users are long accustomed to working in documents that can persist markup without manual saving (e.g. Google Docs, Office on Microsoft 365). I understand that the kernel can't continue running while idle, but there has to be a way to make the markup/code in the notebook recoverable when the kernel dies.