Auto-recovery and session restore in Paint
How Paint by Zaweba saves changed documents to a Recovery folder, offers them back after a crash, reopens your last session and lists recent work.
Every program can be interrupted. A power cut, a Windows update that restarts the computer overnight, a laptop battery that runs out, or simply a crash. What matters is how much work you lose. Paint by Zaweba keeps copies of your changed documents as you go and offers them back afterwards, and it can also bring back the whole set of pictures you had open.
How auto-recovery works
Changed documents are written to a Recovery folder every few minutes. You set how many in Preferences. Only documents with changes are written, so an untouched picture costs nothing.
If Paint closes unexpectedly, the next time it starts it offers to reopen what was in the Recovery folder. You get back your document as it was at the last recovery save, with its layers, rather than whatever you last saved by hand.
Recovery is a safety net, not a replacement for saving. It catches the work you had not saved yet. Keep saving as normal, and let recovery cover the gaps.
A short interval loses less work but writes to disk more often. On a modern solid state drive, writing every few minutes is barely noticeable even for large files. If you work on very large documents on a slow drive, you might lengthen it a little. Think of it as the most work you are willing to redo.
Session restore
Separately, you can choose to have the documents that were open when you closed Paint reopen when you next start it. This is handy when a project spans several files, for example a set of social graphics or a batch of retouches, because tomorrow starts where today ended.
If you prefer to start fresh each time, leave that off and use File > Reopen Last Session on the days you want it.
Recent Documents panel
The Recent Documents panel shows thumbnails of files you have opened lately. Pictures are much easier to recognise by sight than by file name, especially camera files named with numbers. Keep the panel tabbed with another one so it is there when you need it.
A sensible set-up
In Preferences, turn auto-recovery on with an interval that suits you. Decide whether you want automatic session restore or prefer Reopen Last Session on demand. Make sure the scratch and recovery locations are on a drive with space to spare. Then forget about it, which is the point.
What to do after a crash
When Paint offers recovered documents, open them and look before doing anything else. Save each one under a new name straight away, so the recovered version is safe. Then compare it with your last manual save, if you have one, and keep whichever is further along.
Paint by Zaweba runs offline with no account and no telemetry. Recovery files stay in a folder on your own computer and are never sent anywhere. That also means they are only as safe as your drive, so keep your normal backups going for finished work.
Common misunderstandings
Recovery is not a version history, and it is not a reason to skip saving. And session restore only reopens files; it does not undo a decision to close something without saving.
Set up once, these features quietly turn an interruption from a lost afternoon into a minor annoyance.
