Stop losing work to a crash

Automatic recovery is an opt-in safety net for the two moments Maxisnap can lose work: an annotation you have not saved yet, and a video you just finished recording. When it is on, Maxisnap writes a working copy of that in-progress annotation and that completed recording to a separate recovery folder, so if the app closes, the machine reboots, or a window is dismissed by accident, the capture is still there when you come back. It is off until you enable it, it lives in its own folder away from your saved screenshots, and you decide how long recovered copies are kept.

Recovery targets the work that is easiest to lose, not every file on disk. An annotation you are still editing — arrows placed, a region blurred, text added, but not yet saved or uploaded — is held safely so an interruption does not erase the markup. A finished recording is protected the same way: once a screen recording completes, its file is written to the recovery folder before anything else can go wrong, which matters most for a long capture you would hate to redo. Screenshots you have already saved are on disk and do not need recovery; this feature is about the gap between capturing something and saving it.

Automatic recovery is a single switch in Settings, because a safety net is only useful if it is simple to arm. Open Settings, enable automatic recovery, and choose two things: the folder where recovered copies are written, and how long they are kept before Maxisnap cleans them up. A separate folder keeps recovery copies from cluttering the location where you save finished screenshots, and a retention window keeps that folder from growing without limit. After that it runs quietly in the background; you only notice it when you need it.

Automatic recovery writes extra copies of your captures to disk, and that is a decision you should make deliberately rather than have made for you. Some people want every unsaved annotation held for a week; others keep sensitive captures and would rather nothing lingers in a second folder. Leaving it off by default means Maxisnap never quietly keeps copies of your screen without your say-so, and turning it on is a one-time switch with a folder and a retention window you control. It is the same privacy-first stance as the rest of Maxisnap: capture contents stay on your machine unless you choose to upload them.