Save drafts of comments

[ComFreek]

Excerpt from my mail to support@github.com

I'd like to raise a feature request: save drafts of comments during the time they're written (as StackOverflow does with posts, BTW).

I have often encountered the unfortunate scenario that I accidentally closed my browser tab and thereby lost my comment! This is especially an annoying problem with very long comments which were time-consuming to write.

Saving the data into browser's localStorage would suffice in many, if not all, cases in my opinion.

[eddiemonge]

You could always write them in a real text editor (preferably something with spell check) and then copy that in. I think adding this would add too much clutter as there would have to be some way to mange the drafts.

[ComFreek]

Well, StackOverflow doesn't provide a dashboard of all saved drafts either. It would be a nice small alternative to manually saving drafts into the clipboard buffer or writing them in an external editor, but definitely nothing of upmost importance.

[TPS]

Even better, auto-save them as a draft on GitHub account — would've saved me countless retyping on random glitches!

[zaininfo]

I really like how this is handled in Differential (Phabricator) i.e. we can save comments as drafts, before actually publishing them.
I guess, we could tweak that behavior a bit by having two buttons on a comment box, where one of them is to save the comment as a draft.
A dedicated panel for seeing all the drafts would be nice, but one can always go to a PR and see all the saved drafts (since, a saved draft would only be useful in the context of a PR), which can then be published individually.

[TPS]

@zaininfo Does Differential (Phabricator) auto-save, or only manual?

[zaininfo]

@TPS sorry, if I wasn't clear before, in Differential (Phabricator) we have to manually save the comments.
Now that I think of it, maybe, it's much better to tweak this behavior and have auto-saving in GitHub.

[jvivs]

👍 for saving drafts on the fly... just lost a huge comment on an RFC.

[Inlesco]

I don't really understand... Why is it so hard to implement comments saving in the browser's localStorage? It's a must-have feature for comfortable use of GitHub.

Also, an ability to save any comment or mark it as a favorite, so you can view it in your profile under [FAVOTRITES] or [SAVED] tab (the feature being present in Reddit, SO, etc.) would be neat as well (unless it's already there and I've missed smth).

[alecbz]

Pull request reviews already support explicitly saved comments, so it shouldn't be too hard to copy the basic UX there to comments in general. Implicit saving would be a big plus too though.

[speexy]

Just lost a comment by accidentally closing the wrong tab. I just lost an hour of my life. If only there were autosaves!

[Liooo]

probably somebody can make a chrome plugin for this

[tranhungnghiep]

At least it should warn user before closing the tab. Closing without warning is only reasonable when auto save is enable. What a weird UX.

[gioragutt]

This happens to me too many times, accidentally routing away when composing an issue.
This is such a drag.

I would expect it to just be saved when I go back...

[Liooo]

#376 (comment)

here we go, use this plugin

https://github.com/Liooo/github-comment-draft

[gioragutt]

@Liooo what about writing issues and pull requests? This seems the plugin is only for comments

[Liooo]

@gioragutt good point, and it works for them too.

[musicin3d]

If I hit the Cancel button while editing a comment then I get an alert to confirm that I really want to do that. But if I'm writing a new comment and accidentally click any link anywhere then GitHub's just like, "whelp, sucks to suck, sucker." WHAT IS THIS?

[Fusseldieb]

Just lost a major comment due to an power outage.

After 5 years it still isn't present. Nice one ✌️

[victormueller-da]

If I hit the Cancel button while editing a comment then I get an alert to confirm that I really want to do that. But if I'm writing a new comment and accidentally click any link anywhere then GitHub's just like, "whelp, sucks to suck, sucker." WHAT IS THIS?

Just happened to me too, well. This sucks 😄