[Userscript] Bitcointalk Post Saver, Keep Your Writing Safe.

[Royal Cap]

A few days ago, I was writing a post on this forum, I had already spent quite some time writing it, and the post was almost finished, then I accidentally refreshed the page. After the refresh, I saw that everything I had written was gone. It is worth mentioning that I had not clicked the Preview Button, so the forum's own draft system had not saved my post either. After this happened, I was thinking that it would be useful to have a simple userscript that automatically saves your draft while you are typing. So I ended up making this small script for myself.

Tryninja already has a great script for this, but it works by triggering the Preview option in the background, meaning you still have to manually copy your text from the draft area. I wanted something simpler that saves my work seamlessly as I type, so I created this lightweight script.

Features:

• Real Time Auto Save: Saves your text directly to your browser's local storage as you type (don't need the forum's default draft system).
• Separate Drafts per Page: Every topic or reply page gets its own independent draft. Writing on Topic A won't overwrite your draft on Topic B.
• Auto Restore & Cleanup: Closed the tab by mistake? Your text automatically restores when you return to the page. Drafts also delete themselves once you hit submit or after 7 days.
• Character Limit Warning: Comes with a live word and character counter. It will warn you if your text exceeds the forum's maximum limit of 64,000 characters.

Demo:

The Problem


The Solution


Separate Drafts Per Posts

Installation & Usage:

• First, install the Tampermonkey extension (Mobile users can use Firefox for Android).
• Install it with one click via this Greasy Fork link. Alternatively, copy the code below and save it as a new script manually.
• That's it! Open any forum reply or new topic page, and you'll see the live counter and draft status right below the text box.

Code:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Bitcointalk Minimalist Auto-Save Draft
// @version      1.0
// @description  Auto-save draft with auto-expiration (7 days) and 64,000 character limit warning
// @author       Royal Cap
// @match        https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?*action=post*
// @match        https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?*topic=*
// @grant        none
// @license MIT
// @namespace https://greasyfork.org/users/1507638
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'useStrict';

    const textarea = document.querySelector('textarea[name="message"]');
    if (!textarea) return;

    const storageKey = 'btt_draft_' + window.location.href;
    const warnLimit = 64000; // Bitcointalk maximum post length
    const maxAge = 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000; // Delete After 7 Days
    let saveTimeout = null;

    const uiContainer = document.createElement('div');
    uiContainer.style.cssText = 'margin-top: 4px; font-size: 11px; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; color: #444; display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: space-between;';

    const leftGroup = document.createElement('div');
    leftGroup.style.cssText = 'display: flex; align-items: center; gap: 8px;';

    const clearBtn = document.createElement('button');
    clearBtn.type = 'button';
    clearBtn.textContent = 'Clear Draft';
    clearBtn.style.cssText = 'padding: 1px 5px; font-size: 12px; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; background: #e0e0e0; color: #000; border: 1px solid #999; cursor: pointer; display: none;';

    const statusText = document.createElement('span');
    statusText.style.fontStyle = 'italic';
    statusText.style.color = '#666';

    leftGroup.appendChild(clearBtn);
    leftGroup.appendChild(statusText);

    const countDisplay = document.createElement('div');
    countDisplay.style.cssText = 'font-weight: normal; color: #555; margin-right: 50px;';

    uiContainer.appendChild(leftGroup);
    uiContainer.appendChild(countDisplay);

    textarea.parentNode.insertBefore(uiContainer, textarea.nextSibling);

    function updateCounter() {
        const text = textarea.value;
        const charCount = text.length;
        const wordCount = text.trim() ? text.trim().split(/\s+/).length : 0;

        if (charCount > warnLimit) {
            countDisplay.innerHTML = `<span style="color: red; font-weight: bold;">Words: ${wordCount} | Chars: ${charCount} (Exceeding ${warnLimit} limit!)</span>`;
        } else {
            countDisplay.innerHTML = `Words: <b>${wordCount}</b> | Chars: <b>${charCount}</b> / ${warnLimit}`;
        }
    }

    function toggleClearBtn() {
        const savedData = localStorage.getItem(storageKey);
        if (savedData) {
            clearBtn.style.display = 'inline-block';
        } else {
            clearBtn.style.display = 'none';
        }
    }


    const rawData = localStorage.getItem(storageKey);
    if (rawData) {
        try {
            const parsedData = JSON.parse(rawData);

            if (Date.now() - parsedData.timestamp > maxAge) {
                localStorage.removeItem(storageKey);
                statusText.textContent = 'Expired draft deleted';
            } else {
                textarea.value = parsedData.text;
                statusText.textContent = 'Draft restored';
            }
        } catch (e) {

            textarea.value = rawData;
            statusText.textContent = 'Draft restored';
        }
    }

    updateCounter();
    toggleClearBtn();

    textarea.addEventListener('input', function() {
        updateCounter();
        statusText.textContent = 'Saving...';

        clearTimeout(saveTimeout);
        saveTimeout = setTimeout(() => {
            if (textarea.value.trim() === '') {
                localStorage.removeItem(storageKey);
                statusText.textContent = 'Draft empty';
            } else {

                const dataToSave = {
                    text: textarea.value,
                    timestamp: Date.now()
                };
                localStorage.setItem(storageKey, JSON.stringify(dataToSave));
                const timeStr = new Date().toLocaleTimeString([], { hour: '2-digit', minute: '2-digit' });
                statusText.textContent = `Saved at ${timeStr}`;
            }
            toggleClearBtn();
        }, 500);
    });

    clearBtn.addEventListener('click', function() {
        if (confirm('Clear saved draft?')) {
            localStorage.removeItem(storageKey);
            textarea.value = '';
            updateCounter();
            statusText.textContent = 'Draft cleared';
            toggleClearBtn();
        }
    });

    const form = textarea.closest('form');
    if (form) {
        form.addEventListener('submit', function() {
            localStorage.removeItem(storageKey);
        });
    }
})();

Note: This script relies exclusively on your browser's localStorage. If you clear your browser cache or site data, your saved drafts might be deleted.

[Vod]

A few days ago, I was writing a post on this forum. I had already spent quite some time writing it, and the post was almost finished, then I accidentally refreshed the page.

When this happens to me, sometimes the back button restores everything.

[BitMaxz]

When this happens to me, sometimes the back button restores everything.

It does not work when you accidentally click Reload. Everything you wrote, including the subject title, is completely gone, and the back button cannot save them.

[ryzaadit]

When this happens to me, sometimes the back button restores everything.

It's Chrome's Back/Forward Cache.

But, these sometimes will not work at the time you're accidently refresh the page. Like F5, or clicking "Reload this page" either the page blank or you will go to the thread you want to post.

However, Chrome's Back/Forward Cache might work if you accidently go to other page like miss clicked to other page. This stuff, we can tested too.
- F12
- Go to Application
- In the left, try to looks: Background services
- Looks Back/forward cache.
- Feels to Run Test.

[promise444c5]

When this happens to me, sometimes the back button restores everything.

It does not work when you accidentally click Reload. Everything you wrote, including the subject title, is completely gone, and the back button cannot save them.

He mentioned “sometimes” though..  hitting the refresh button isn’t really that common like how mobile browser automatically refreshes  and wiping the text field after peeping outside Bitcointalk tab but yeah it surely does happen.

Apart from the main TryNinja’s code, there’s another version I modified for we lazy people ..  displays a preview along [a mod of the original script ] : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5576527.msg66478287#msg66478287 .

OP’s code interacts with the LS which is another option ..

[tbct_mt2]

Features

• Draft is automatically saved while typing (Does not use the forum's draft feature)
• Saved draft is automatically restored after refreshing the page. This also means even if you come back to the same reply page after 1 day, your saved post will still be there unless you click the Clear button.
• Drafts older than 7 days are automatically deleted
• Saved draft is automatically deleted after submitting the post
• Shows a warning when the post exceeds the 64,000 character limit, because a forum's post can contain a maximum of 64,000 characters. (This is especially useful for people who write large posts.)

More information about the forum draft page.
Draft page - Pros & Cons.

Your user script is helpful for people who are ready to use user script and don't want to draft their posts in other softwares before copying and pasting it to the forum for publishing their posts. It's very helpful for them as directly composing posts in the forum can cause post content loss if there is issue with connection and forget of clicking on Preview.

[un_rank]

I have been using TryNinja's script since it was introduced and it has worked perfectly for the intended purpose. It doesn't hurt to have multiple resources for a single problem, we have it for many other scripts on the forum, so it's welcome for this too.
Yours also has the edge of saving directly on the page and not to the draft list which has some downsides of quickly filling up the draft space and it sometimes being difficult to get the version of a post you want to restore when they all look very familiar.

I like minimalist looks for pages here, the word counter with the red colour will be off putting to me for every message I write. It only helps a few members who type long posts, many of whom will already use external sources for their writing and then paste it here.

- Jay -

[MisFoxie]

I tried using your tool, and it is actually useful, but not in every case. Your tool will be very helpful when the page gets refreshed or closed somehow while writing but if some text gets selected and removed somehow there is no way to restore it.

And I really liked the text limit feature and it works very well for English words but when I test with it other local languages it doesn't work at all.

[LTU_btc]

It does not work when you accidentally click Reload. Everything you wrote, including the subject title, is completely gone, and the back button cannot save them.

Don't know, maybe it depends on browser, but I just checked on Firefox - my main browser. Tried to click reload button in browser and also F5 and in both cases stuff that I wrote before didn't disappear.
Anyway, I think this script is going to be useful, probably significant part of users faced such thing at least once.

[DYING_S0UL]

Who accidentally refreshes the tab while posting! LOL ! Cause I don't, it's either preview or post for me.

What's the interval of each saves? I don't wanna accidentally press backspace and have the tool save a blank page. You know what I mean! Or is there multiple versions of saves for the same post? Multiple versions for the same things would be nice. Like each versions having 1 minutes of intervals, and max 5 versions. And after it reaches the 5th one, the very 1st one gets deleted and a new latest one gets added.

That 64,000 characters limit you say (also bear in mind, 65535 bytes in size) is only for "English" language! So can your script calculate the local posts? Many non English language takes more space and weight. For example "Bangla" takes 3x the space than "English". So I can only write about 24-25k characters. I'll be hitting the post size limit of 64kb, long before I hit the 64k character limit.

Now I did not used your tool, so another question is where does this draft gets saved on? From where I can access the saved content? (saw the Gifs, but they weren't clear to me).

[Mia Chloe]

~snip

Like I always say thumbs up for the effort you put in. That aside, I have encountered this problem multiple times to the extent I actually got two ways work around it and avoid losing all my text. The first is hitting preview at intervals when I type and the second is just copying everything to my clipboard.

Another thing I noticed is you'll only lose your text if you refresh an already existing page but if I use links and URLs to access other pages if I hit the back button the correct number of times I'll eventually get back to the page with my text intact only the post button may not work till you refresh.

[BitMaxz]

Don't know, maybe it depends on browser, but I just checked on Firefox - my main browser. Tried to click reload button in browser and also F5 and in both cases stuff that I wrote before didn't disappear.
Anyway, I think this script is going to be useful, probably significant part of users faced such thing at least once.

Well, to me, sometimes it happens, but not always. Maybe because you write long, or maybe this only happens to quoted replies?
I'm using Chrome; I've never tried it on Firefox, so the problem could be with the browser. I tried multiple times just now while writing this post, but it does not save; only the quotes remain intact.

So the script is going to be useful, I believe, to those who are having the same issue as mine.

[alegotardo]

This solution is incredible!

I would like to know if.... your script could also work to other sites outside Bitcointalk?
I’ve already had problems like this with forms in others websites... sometimes I lose the information even when some kind of server error occurs, when I return to the form everything that I had typed is lost (yes... this is a programming problem of website, but the users are the ones who suffer the consequences).

When this happens to me, sometimes the back button restores everything.

It does not work when you accidentally click Reload. Everything you wrote, including the subject title, is completely gone, and the back button cannot save them.

I believe that something like this script of OP should be a native feature of browser, whether going back to the page or reloading it.

[ryzaadit]

This solution is incredible!
I would like to know if.... your script could also work to other sites outside Bitcointalk?

In the code.

If you use it without changing anything, it's not gonna work. Cause the @match are being inputed to Bitcointalk, you can try to edit the script code to the website or other domains you want to use for the script.

Feels to test it by your self perhaps ? by changing the @match with the site you want to use.

[dkbit98]

I am testing your userscriot now and it is working fine, it is nice that we can manually clear draft with a single click of a button.
This tool can be useful when creating new long topics, for managers starting new campaigns, or something similar.
I didn't face any issues in bitcointalk for a long time with drafts, but it happens sometime I close tab by accident

[Mia Chloe]

Who accidentally refreshes the tab while posting! LOL ! Cause I don't, it's either preview or post for me.

It happens to me a lot that's why before now I just use the preview button. For those that are making use of mobile devices it's even more frequent owing to the fact that dragging from the top of the screen down automatically refreshes the current page and the back button is always useless in such cases.

I am testing your userscriot now and it is working fine, it is nice that we can manually clear draft with a single click of a button.
This tool can be useful when creating new long topics, for managers starting new campaigns, or something similar.
I didn't face any issues in bitcointalk for a long time with drafts, but it happens sometime I close tab by accident

It depends I barely lose lengthy threads because I'll have to always preview and check how it is formatted before I eventually post especially if there are many images and BB Codes.

[Crypto Library]

Now I did not used your tool, so another question is where does this draft gets saved on? From where I can access the saved content? (saw the Gifs, but they weren't clear to me).

I also have the same question here. I've been watching Royal_cap's live screenshot GIF for a long time, where he wrote separate drafts for each post. But where can we actually find these separately?

I think he should have mentioned these things in the OP.

However, I already use TryNinja's Auto-Save Draft for BitcoinTalk.org script. Even here I make a small customization so that if I accidentally reload or my computer crashes, it doesn't cause any problems.

like here you can see I just replace the INTERVAL_SECOND 60 to 2, although there is issues with that, can cross the limit of 100 draft so fastly but in my case I can handle that because it at least saves me from losing content after a mistaken reload.

[Royal Cap]

Who accidentally refreshes the tab while posting! LOL ! Cause I don't, it's either preview or post for me.

Me! Because when I browse or post on forums with a mobile device, sometimes accidental swipes often refresh the page, and everything goes away. And as far as I know, you usually write in notepad first and then post on the forum, so maybe that's why you don't have to face this refresh problem much.

What's the interval of each saves? I don't wanna accidentally press backspace and have the tool save a blank page. You know what I mean! Or is there multiple versions of saves for the same post? Multiple versions for the same things would be nice. Like each versions having 1 minutes of intervals, and max 5 versions. And after it reaches the 5th one, the very 1st one gets deleted and a new latest one gets added.

This script saves every 0.5 seconds (500 milliseconds). That means it saves your text almost immediately as soon as you stop typing. And It doesn't saved any version.

That 64,000 characters limit you say (also bear in mind, 65535 bytes in size) is only for "English" language! So can your script calculate the local posts? Many non English language takes more space and weight. For example "Bangla" takes 3x the space than "English". So I can only write about 24-25k characters. I'll be hitting the post size limit of 64kb, long before I hit the 64k character limit.

For the character limit, I saw that many people aren't liking it, so I am thinking of removing this feature in the next update. However, if you guys want, I can try to customize it later based on bytes and spaces to accommodate other languages like Bangla or other languages.

Now I did not used your tool, so another question is where does this draft gets saved on? From where I can access the saved content? (saw the Gifs, but they weren't clear to me).

These drafts are basically saved locally in your browser's Local Storage. It saves in the background as you type. If for some reason your post tab gets closed, the next time you visit the exact same link or topic, your text will be restored right in the text box from exactly where you left off. You won't have to go through the hassle of copy pasting from a draft section. To make it easier to understand, I have also updated the GIFs in the main post. I hope it's a bit clearer now.

I would like to know if.... your script could also work to other sites outside Bitcointalk?

It is hard to say for sure whether the script will work on other websites. The HTML tags or elements for text boxes vary from website to website. This script was made specifically targeting Bitcointalk's. However, you can try tweaking the code a bit to see if it works for other sites. Just replace the site link.

Code:

// @match        https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?*action=post*
// @match        https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?*topic=*

I also have the same question here. I've been watching Royal_cap's live screenshot GIF for a long time, where he wrote separate drafts for each post. But where can we actually find these separately?

In this script, you don't have to go and search for the drafts separately. It basically auto save the data in your browser based on the unique URL of your post or topic.

Suppose, you are writing a post on a specific topic and accidentally close the browser. Then when you open the reply link of the same topic again, your previous writing will be restored directly to the text box where you left off. That is, it will not save your writing in the default draft system of the forum. And when you submit the Post, that saved data will be automatically deleted from the background immediately.

[DYING_S0UL]

For those that are making use of mobile devices it's even more frequent owing to the fact that dragging from the top of the screen down automatically refreshes the current page and the back button is always useless in such cases

Me! Because when I browse or post on forums with a mobile device, sometimes accidental swipes often refresh the page, and everything goes away.

Uh, mobile devices! I didn't though of that

when making that comment (an overlook from my side). Now it makes sense...

And as far as I know, you usually write in notepad first and then post on the forum, so maybe that's why you don't have to face this refresh problem much.

Yes, I write on notepad first (I have like thousands of notes already saved), then edit it, add the necessary Bbcodes and so on. It's hard to quote multiple users, remove the unnecessary parts, and post it without messing up Bbcodes, that's why. Even this very reply, I'm wtitting in notepad.

This script saves every 0.5 seconds (500 milliseconds). That means it saves your text almost immediately as soon as you stop typing. And It doesn't saved any version.

So an accidental backspace and everything is gone right? This ain't helpful at all. You should implement the time logic that TryNinja did in his tool. Also, add multiple versions of the draft.

For the character limit, I saw that many people aren't liking it, so I am thinking of removing this feature in the next update.

It's not about liking, it's whether you can caculate it properly! The logic, the format the encoding, isn't the same for everything language. There are UTF-8, UTF-8 (things/terms that even I don't understand properly).

In this script, you don't have to go and search for the drafts separately. It basically auto save the data in your browser based on the unique URL of your post or topic.

Suppose I don't remember the topic (the unique URL you say) where my draft got saved! Then what? That's why some of us were suggestion for a seperate section or a button, where we can access the listed drafts in case we don't remember. You understood what I mean right?