Does Canva Save Automatically?

Working on a design on Canva is user-friendly and straightforward, but some projects are more time-consuming than others. This is why the autosave feature comes in handy. If anything happens to your design, like the program or your laptop shutting down, it will be saved automatically.

But how can you be sure if your progress was saved? This article will discuss how the autosave feature works, how often the program autosaves, and other ways to save your design.

How Often Does Canva Autosave?

Canva offers the autosave feature on both the PC and mobile versions. To do so, Canva uses the Mongo DB cluster to save your design. The autosave rate has apparent technological advantages and disadvantages. The more often your design gets saved, the less you’ll lose it in a crash or any other incident. However, this comes at the cost of additional write operations across the backend and the database cluster.

Canva started the autosave feature at a rate of five seconds, meaning the software only saves every five seconds if the user is changing their design. This seemed to work fine under the average workload.

But, considerable spikes in design activity occur occasionally, and these quickly exhaust the database’s limited write capability, resulting in severe performance deterioration for all Canva users. The autosave function was the most significant contribution to the writing load.

One way to solve this problem would have been to scale up the database cluster to enhance the steady-state write capacity. However, this implies that most of the obtained and costly write capacity would have remained unused under typical stress.

Instead, Canva decided to change the mechanism of the design autosave rate dynamically, requesting that each user takes a break for a bit. This break allowed Canva to level out and moderate the demand for database writes during periods of high usage.

Canva was able to define the autosave criteria in two ways.

The approach covered the throughput queries-per-second (or QPS) and latency (or millisecond delays). A monitoring system measures a five-minute moving average of throughput and delay backing the autosave feature.

The monitoring system is combined with the dynamic thresholds to be altered in real-time, allowing fine-tuning. When determining the criteria, the number of active users of the program must be considered.

When the thresholds overflow, users may receive a response. When a user gets a response with “throttle: true,” it reduces the pace of autosaves to the lowest possible level. If the user receives a “throttle: false,” the speed of autosaves is raised by a fixed amount up to the maximum rate permitted.

Unfortunately, this means the rate of Canva autosaves for changes is not fixed; it depends on the overall traffic on the platform. The average is every few seconds after changes occur.

How to Autosave

Besides autosaving, there is also manual saving. Autosaving is more accessible, and to do so, follow these steps:

1. On Canva’s homepage, click on “Create a Design.”
   
2. Check if “All Changes Saved” is written on the taskbar right next to “Resize.”
   
3. Change your design however you want. When adding changes, the text “All changes saved” will be replaced by “Saving changes.” This signifies that it is currently saving all of the things you’ve altered.
   

You can still manually save if you wish to be sure you’ve saved all of the current changes you’ve made on your design. The steps to do so are:

1. Click on “File” on the taskbar after finishing your design.
   
2. Select “Save” from the menu.
   
3. If you don’t see the words “All changes saved,” click “Save.”
4. Go to the “Save to Folder” option if you’re working on many projects at once. Select this option and go to the folder in which you wish to save your current design.
   

However, you can also save your designs directly to a platform like Plann Workspace grid or Plann Media Collections.

Here are the steps to save designs to the Plann Workspace grid:

1. Click the “+” symbol to create a new design.
   
2. Select the “CANVA” button.
   
3. You’ll go straight to your Canva account, where you may make changes to your personalized design.
4. Select “PUBLISH” when you’re finished.
   
5. Your work will show up in your Plann Workspace Grid, where you can write a description and schedule an Instagram post.
   

To save your designs directly to Plann Media Collections, the steps are:

1. Add media to your design by clicking the “+” icon.
   
2. Choose “CANVA” as a media source.
   
3. You’ll be directed to your Canva account, where you can make changes to your personalized design.
4.  Choose “PUBLISH” after finishing your design.
   
5. Your work will show up in your Plann Media Collection, where you may write a caption and schedule an Instagram post.

Additional FAQs

What Can I Do if My Autosave Is Not Working?

It’s possible that the changes you made to your design haven’t been saved because you’re using an older version of the app or software, have unstable internet access, or are experiencing continuous site difficulties.

Check to see whether your browser or mobile application is up to date. If necessary, update your browser or app to the most recent version. Make sure JavaScript is switched on in your browser. You may try using a different browser since the one you’re using may not fulfill the technological requirements. Also, check if you have a reliable and fast internet connection.

Sometimes your changes may not save because the saving process was interrupted. To prevent this, look at the status bar. Canva saves designs every few seconds after they’ve been edited. Before closing designs, wait until the status bar shows “All changes saved.” To check the status on the mobile app, touch on the three horizontal dots first.

You can always save the design manually or clear the cache and history of your web browser. Cookies that have accumulated might occasionally create problems. However, you should be aware that doing so may result in you being logged out of other websites.

Design Without Worries

The autosave feature can save you from losing hours of work. However, it is not perfect. Some issues may occur from time to time, and it happens that not all changes get saved. If you are not sure if all of your changes have been saved, check out the taskbar or save your file manually just in case.

How often do you use Canva? Have you ever lost any work due to the failure of autosave? Do you prefer saving files automatically or manually? Let us know in the comment section below!