The manual save button is back on World Anvil! Throughout the years we’ve heard and read your feedback about this, and we thought that with the recent updates to the article edit interface, now was the perfect time to bring it back. After a testing round with our lovely Alchemists, here’s everything you need to know about this feature release!

Note: if you’re one of the Alchemists who tested the save button, your account has reverted back to autosave with this release. Keep reading to learn how to enable it!

How to activate Manual Save Buttons on World Anvil

Manual Save can be enabled for articles and categories, and when it’s enabled it replaces autosave (i.e. with manual save enabled, articles and categories will only save if you click the button). Here’s how to enable it:

  1. On World Anvil, click your profile picture at the top right to bring up the menu with account options.
  2. Select “Features”.
  3. Scroll down and disable “Articles & Categories Autosave”.

Reload the page and Manual Save will be enabled on articles and categories. Here’s what the article edit toolbar with the save button looks like (as of January 2026):

Toolbar with manual save as of January 2026

With manual save, your content isn’t saved automatically—so if you close the page without saving, you’ll lose your content! Always remember to save before leaving or reloading the page.

Why is a manual save button useful?

Manual saving has a number of advantages that are all related to having more control over what saves when. Some of the comments we’ve gotten over the years tell us that some people find this useful because…

  • You can control when an update to an article goes live, avoiding public articles that look unfinished if someone views it while you’re writing.
  • Since you clicked the button, you know exactly when the content was last saved.
  • It can be more stable under very specific circumstances such as unstable or very slow internet connections.

We believe the advantages of autosave (such as not having to remember to click the button every time) exceed those of a manual system for most users, which is why we’re keeping it as the default behavior. But we’ve decided to give you the option to use manual save because we understand different people have different workflows and priorities!

Share your feedback!

As always, we want to hear what you think! On World Anvil, click the “?” Help button at the top right to find the feedback button. We read every single comment there and keep it in mind when developing World Anvil!