Darktable | database auto-save

kind regards to all
I apologize for the nerd question. I could have found the answer to my question somewhere, but I couldn’t.
The program sometimes crashes and when you open it again, you see that all the actions you did not save.
Is it possible somewhere in the program to set the time interval after which it will automatically save your database?

This has come up a few times before, first one I thought of was this topic:

And its accompanying GitHub FR/Issue:

Not sure if this is going to be implemented any time soon, if at all.

I made it a habit, when working with darktable, to use the ctrl-c - ctrl-v workaround as mentioned by me in the linked topic. It will not fully safeguard you from keeping all your edits when crashing, but at least you don’t have to start over all the way from scratch.

BTW: Compressing the history stack also works, but that might come with unwanted consequences: All duplicate entries in the stack are merged into one, the latest, so, after compressing, if you had, for example, multiple colour balance entries you cannot go back to the previous one any longer, there’s only one left.

Thank you.

And the story does not save the actions with the instrument, within the instrument itself.
I will take the exposure tool as an example.
Unfold and move the exposure slider - the tool item appears in the history. Great. Now we move the exposure slider again. And what do we see? In the history, as there was one item of the tool, it remains there.
It is quite possible that this item in the history is not a single action, but some container of actions displayed by only one item, but I haven’t read anything about it anywhere.

################
About the keyboard shortcuts ctrl+[c,v].
self-discipline is good, but my experience is that I don’t do well with self-discipline. I will use this approach for a while, but only for a while.

###############
If the program can not do autosave database, I do not even know what to say about it)) And it crashes a lot. Especially since I have amd video card and under pc things are not the best with this hardware. If we’re talking about opencl.

I will think about what to do. What else is there to do))

Thanks again for responding.

The action(s) shown for a specific module at its location in the history stack is always in regard to its default or, if there are multiple entries, previous setting.

Using scene referred the exposure module shows this as the initial state:

01

If I now start using the exposure module a new entry will show up in the history stack and the starting point will always be the endpoint from the previous one. After trying out some settings it shows this:

2a

If I change it again it will show this:

2b

The starting point does not change, it will reflect the previous exposure entry in the history stack.

Do some other, non exposure stuff (I deactivated and the reactivated filmic) and go back to the exposure module and change the setting:

3

Again the starting point is from the previous entry in the stack.

You can still go back to the previous point (12 in this example) and start from there if you want/need.

Now if you compress the stack, only one exposure entry will remain and it will show this:

4

It shows the original, default as starting point and where you left of the last time you used it. There’s no going back here.

Well, that’s how you have to do it. But it’s “somehow through something”…

In Davinci resolve I had this implemented in two ways so that I didn’t need the history either:
Save to memory (alt/opt + F1 hotkey). or alt/opt + F2 etc.
If you need to restore the image - ctrl/cmd+F1 etc.

  1. Or take a picture to the gallery. Grab still (with all settings of instruments).

very conveniently

In darktable, too, you can save everything in styles, but each time you have to keep track of the tool items, what to save and what not.
I wouldn’t mind)))) if there were presets of the list of items to save and not to save. Otherwise you have to watch every time.
Or a hottkey at all, like alt+f1 etc. without subsequent dialogs. Actually, that would be possible to load these presets with hotkeys. quickly.