Studio can maintain a version of any open existing record with unsaved changes. Users can recover unsaved changes when their user session ends unexpectedly due to network latency, session timeout, or service interruption.

Important: You've landed at the legacy version of Studio, which will be supported until the Australia release in Q1 2026. Try building and editing apps in the new version of ServiceNow Studio instead. For more information, see Building applications with ServiceNow Studio.
Automatic recovery only applies to:
  • Records open in Studio. The system does not save all draft records.
  • Changes made in desktop (non-mobile) browsers. The system does not save draft records from mobile browsers.
  • Changes made to existing records. The system does not save draft changes to new records.
  • Records containing unsaved changes that are the most recent update to the record. The system discards draft changes when another user has updated the same record.
  • Records for tables that extend the Application File [sys_metadata] table.

After the user re-establishes a session, Studio displays a message for each record with recovered changes.

Figure 1. Automatic recovery message
The automatic recovery message reads, Previous unsaved edits to this record have been recovered. Continue to edit or clear the changes.
For each recovered record, users can:
  • Continue editing and save the record.
  • Clear the changes from the recovery cache.
The system automatically clears changes from the recovery cache when a user:
  • Saves the record. The system removes the saved record from the recovery cache.
  • Confirms navigating away from a record without saving changes. The system removes the abandoned record from the recovery cache.
  • Reaches the recovery cache limit of 5 MB of changes. The system removes the record with the oldest update date-time stamp.

By default, automatic recovery is enabled for all Application File [sys_metadata] tables while working from Studio.

Administrators can configure automatic recovery properties to:
  • Disable or re-enable automatic recovery.
  • Specify a list of field types to exclude from automatic recovery.

Users can enable or disable automatic recovery as a user preference.