Saving and Auto-Save

You do not have to remember to save in the Studio. As you edit, your work saves automatically — a moment after you stop typing or moving things, and again periodically during a long stretch of edits. You can keep building without the nagging worry of losing progress.

What the status indicator tells you

The top bar shows a quiet status next to the Preview button:

• Unsaved changes — you have edited something Berdee has not written yet. It sits beside the status below and clears on its own the moment the save lands; you do not have to do anything about it.
• Saving… — your latest changes are being written.
• Saved 14:32 — everything is safely stored, with the time of the last save.
• Couldn't save — a save did not go through. The Studio keeps retrying on its own when the problem looks temporary (for example, a brief network hiccup), and offers you a Retry to press yourself. Your unsaved work stays in the editor in the meantime, so nothing is lost while it retries.
• Not saved — retrying — saving has been failing for a couple of minutes (your internet is down, or Berdee is having trouble). The Studio hasn't given up: it tries again every minute, and straight away when your connection comes back. You can keep working, or press Retry yourself. Your browser also keeps a copy of the unsaved edits — see If saving fails and you close the tab.
• This lesson is too large to save. — a different message, for a different problem. Your lesson's structure — its scenes, widgets, and interaction rules — has grown past the size Berdee can store, so retrying and checking your connection won't help. Remove some scenes or widgets you don't need and save again. Nothing you've already saved is lost; this only blocks the next save until the lesson is smaller.

There is no Save button, and you do not need one. If you would rather not wait the moment for auto-save to catch up, press ⌘S (Ctrl+S on Windows) — it does the same thing auto-save does, just right away. It works while you are typing, on the Lesson Graph, and in History.

One exception: while a settings or widget-configuration dialog is open, ⌘S saves _that dialog_ — the same as clicking its Save button. Close the dialog and ⌘S goes back to saving the lesson.

It is one of a handful of shortcuts the editor listens for — press ? on the canvas for the rest, or see Keyboard Shortcuts.

Auto-save also runs when you switch tabs, close the tab, or navigate away, so the version on the server matches what you see on screen.

If saving fails and you close the tab

While saves are failing, your browser quietly keeps a copy of the edits that haven't reached Berdee yet. So if your laptop goes to sleep, the browser crashes, or you close the tab before the connection comes back, those edits aren't gone.

The next time you open that lesson in the same browser, you'll see Restore unsaved changes?, with the time the copy was made:

• Restore my edits — puts your unsaved edits back into the editor and saves them. If you change your mind, Undo (⌘Z) takes you straight back to the saved version.
• Discard them — keeps the saved version and deletes the copy from this browser.

If the lesson was saved from somewhere else after the copy was made — another computer, another tab — the message says so. Restoring then replaces that newer version with your copy, and the newer version stays in History, so you can go back to it.

Close the message without choosing and nothing changes; you'll be asked again the next time you open the lesson.

A few things to know:

• The copy lives only in the browser you were using. Opening the lesson on another computer won't show it.
• It's deleted as soon as a save goes through, and copies older than 30 days are discarded.
• Browsers in private or incognito mode, or with site storage turned off, may not keep a copy at all — another reason to watch for Saved before you close the lid.

Every save is a point you can go back to

Saving is not only about not losing today's work. Each save also becomes a point in your lesson's History — a running record of what you changed and when, which you can look back through, preview, and restore your draft to. See History and restore.

Text you are still typing

A few fields hold what you type until you finish: renaming a widget from the inspector header, renaming a scene in the Scenes list, and editing text directly on the canvas. Press Enter, or click anywhere outside the field, and the change lands in your lesson — from that moment auto-save treats it like any other edit.

Because that text is not part of the lesson yet, auto-save has nothing to save while you are mid-word. So if you try to close the tab or leave the page with a name half-typed, Berdee warns you first rather than letting it disappear quietly. Finish the edit — press Enter, or click outside the field — and the warning stops.

If the same lesson is open in two tabs

Sooner or later you will have one lesson open twice — a second window you forgot about, a tab still open on another computer. When the tab you are working in tries to save on top of changes the other tab already saved, it stops and asks you first rather than quietly writing over them.

You'll see This lesson changed in another tab, with two choices:

• Keep my version — the highlighted choice, and the one to pick if you have

been building here and want to carry on. The lesson becomes what you see in this tab. It is not a merge — the other tab's changes don't appear in your scenes; your version simply takes over from here.

• Reload — loads the other tab's version into this one instead. Pick this if

the work in this tab isn't the version you want to keep. It names the time it will roll back to, because anything you have changed here since then has not been saved yet and will be gone.

Whichever you pick, both tabs' saves are already in History — so this is a choice about which version you carry on editing, not one that erases the other. The only thing at risk is work in this tab you haven't saved yet, which is exactly what Reload discards and why it says so.

You can also close the message without choosing. Nothing is saved and nothing is lost; Berdee simply asks again the next time it tries to save. While the message is on screen this tab holds off on saving and waits for your answer, so the same question won't keep interrupting you. The top bar reads Couldn't save for as long as that wait lasts — that is the paused save, not a problem with your connection. Picking Keep my version or Reload clears it.

One gap worth knowing about

A tab can only compare against what it has already saved, so the check covers every save except a tab's first one. That is usually a non-issue — a tab saves within moments of your first edit there, and from then on it is covered.

It matters in one situation: a lesson left open in a window you have not touched. Work on that lesson somewhere else, then come back to the untouched window and make an edit — that first save can still land on top of the newer work without asking. Once it has saved, that tab behaves like any other.

So the simplest way to skip all of this: work in one tab at a time. If you do end up with two, finish in one and reload the other before you pick that lesson back up — reloading is what brings a tab that has been sitting open up to date.

Auto-save is not publishing

This is the important part: auto-save saves your private draft, not the version learners see.

• Your draft is your private working copy. Auto-save keeps it current as you edit. No one but you sees it.
• Publishing is a separate, deliberate step that takes a snapshot of your draft and makes it the version your learners run.

In other words, you can edit freely all day, knowing every change is being saved to your draft — and none of it reaches students until you choose to publish. A half-finished scene, an experiment you are not sure about, a typo you are about to fix: all of it is saved, none of it is live.

When you assign a lesson, learners always work from the published snapshot — so a student mid-lesson is never disrupted by an edit you make afterward.

If your lesson is listed on the marketplace, the top bar also shows whether your draft is ahead of the version buyers see, with a button to publish updates from right inside the editor — see Publishing updates to your listed lessons.

Tips

• Watch for Saved before closing your laptop or stepping away; it confirms your draft is current.
• If you see Couldn't save or Not saved — retrying and it does not clear on its own, check your internet connection, then click Retry next to the message. If the message instead reads This lesson is too large to save, that's a size problem, not a connection one — there is no Retry to click, because retrying cannot fix it. Trim down the number of scenes or widgets before trying again.
• Want to see your changes the way a learner will? Use Preview and test a lesson — preview runs your current draft without publishing it.