Is there a notebook autosave frequency configuration?

Question

I've had Mathematica crash on me a number of times, and have had to recreate notebook contents from the last save point.

I was looking for something in the preferences like an autosave frequency configuration parameter that I could use to automatically save all my notebook content at some regular frequency to minimize losses due to crashes.

I found NotebookSave[], and a NotebookAutoSave -> True attribute for CreateDocument, but both these appear to be for manipulating external notebooks. Is there a way to do this systematically and by default?

Answer 1

You can set the NotebookAutoSave preference programmatically or via the Option Inspector.

To turn autosave on by default for all notebooks, you could do:

CurrentValue[$FrontEnd, "NotebookAutoSave"] = True

You can also set the option for individual notebooks by changing $FrontEnd to the appropriate notebook handle. According to the docs, NotebookAutoSave saves after every evaluation and seems to be inflexible in that regard.

Answer 2

You could try executing

RunScheduledTask[
    EmitSound[Sound[SoundNote[]]];NotebookSave[EvaluationNotebook[]], 10];

which saves the notebook every 10 seconds and plays a note.