How to Turn off automatic saving on web storm

It seems there is no way to make Webstorm 9 behaving like a standard text editor.

The closer you can get is:

  • Settings / Appearance & Behavior / System Settings / Save file on frame deactivation: unchecked
  • Settings / Appearance & Behavior / System Settings / Save files automatically if...: unchecked
  • Settings / Editor / General / Editor tabs / Mark modified tabs with asterisk : checked

The resulting behavior is:

  • Changes are not automatically saved in the file
  • If you close a changed file, no warning is displayed
  • If you close a changed file then reopen it, changes have not been lost

See also this discussion: http://www.dotmana.com/weblog/2012/07/disable-auto-save-in-phpstorm/


Automatic save can be disabled using the following options:

File | Settings | Appearance & Behavior | System Settings > Uncheck these boxes below:

  • Save files on frame deactivation
  • Save files automatically if application is idle for...

Save options

Be aware that File Watchers feature may override this behavior for the specific file types (if enabled).

Save will also occur automatically on certain actions (running a configuration, IDE quit, project close, etc).

You may want to enable the option to mark modified files with *.