The Edit Recovery feature of MediaWiki core, developed by the WMF Community Tech team, is a browser-based system of saving in-progress edits, to allow for recovery in case of the browser being accidentally closed. Edit data is stored locally on the user's device. This feature is for the wikitext editor —not VisualEditor or DiscussionTools , which use their own autosave mechanisms— and does not require WikiEditor to be enabled.

Note, as Edit Recovery uses the Indexed Database API, the data is saved only for the current browser and device. You cannot recover an edit on a different device.

The feature has been deployed to all Wikimedia projects, and as of May 2024 feedback is being sought from users. Users are invited to report any issues on the project talk page. This was the #8 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.

Usage

Basic notification window (above) and variant when intermediate changes are found (bottom).

Once enabled, nothing further needs to be done in order to use Edit Recovery. Start editing any wiki page, and every five seconds the current state of the editing form will be saved to the browser's storage. If the window is closed (either accidentally or by a computer crash etc.), re-open it and navigate back to editing the same page — if there is any recovery data available, a notification will be displayed offering an option to restore it into the editing form. If the page has been edited since the local recovery data was stored, the notification will also mention this, and suggest to review your changes.

The notification gives you two options: to recover the changes, or discard them.

If you wish to stop editing a page and not have any edit recovery data saved, the "Cancel" link should be used. As soon as you click "Cancel" the edit recovery data is deleted. If you don't cancel or save an editing session, then after 30 days (default value) the recovery data is automatically expired.

Special:EditRecovery

There is a special page at Special:EditRecovery which lists all current pages that have any recovery data. From the list you can go directly to editing or viewing any page, or delete the page's data (if you know that it's no longer needed).

Opting out

A user preference is available to enable/disable the feature.

See also

• Manual:Edit Recovery — Information about the feature for wiki system administrators and developers.