Prevent the loss of an unsaved project issue if the issue tab is navigated away from; save issue as draft

[matt-y]

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I just lost an enormous issue ticket that I was writing by accidentally changing tabs in a github project. This is frustrating, to put it lightly.

I'd like to be able to save an issue as a draft, and have it not show up in the project's active issue list until I've completed it. This allows me to not have to complete a large ticket in a single sitting, and allows me to add details over time. It is very difficult to write a comprehensive issue without being able to save it.

Alternatively, can the github UI somehow warn me that I am navigating away from unsaved work? It should not be possible to just have a multiple paragraph long issue ticket complete with screenshots and etc just vanish when you accidentally click something that takes you away form the form.

[Nunatic02]

Hey @matt-y! I find a way to restore my large draft issue as described in this twitter.

You may find your draft issue cached inside Developer Tools -> Application -> Session Storage.
And you can then copy value of the issue title and body and paste them into your edit box, and everything is properly recovered.

[matt-y]

That may work for a time as a possible way to recover lost data immediately - but that is not reliable, officially supported, does not cover the main use case of a draft - which is editing, or anything else sadly.

Github still needs official support for drafts.

[Nunatic02]

Yeah, I agree 😢

[christophfriedrich]

Thank you so much for posting this workaround! Saved me a lot of time and nerves after accidentally hitting the back button on my mouse just before I was ready to post... As I was not able to access the tweet, I post here how I was able to get my draft back in Firefox: Open the dev tools (F12 or Ctrl+Shift+K) -> Web Storage -> Session Storage -> https://github.com -> There was an entry with key session-resume:/issues that had a JSON value [["new_comment_field", "<all the work I did in the last hour>"]] 🎉 The right-click context menu didn't have a "Copy" entry for me (only "Delete" 😳), but I was able to copy it by double-clicking on the value which turned the text into an editable box.

[julie777]

At least confirm that the user knows that they are leaving the page and will be losing work, like other web pages do.

[pratikbgit]

I spent more than 1.5 hours and write each my important thaught process and attaching the video i lost the entire my draft.

[aramrw]

Is there a technical reason why issue drafts are not a thing..?

[sidt4]

Bad design!

[leleogere]

A popup to make sure the user does want to quit the page is mandatory, I've just lost 1h of work by accidentally closing the wrong browser window (and it seems the session storage isn't saved when closing the window)

[EmileSonneveld]

I had the same when I had to restart my computer. The solution would be to use this trick in the frontend:

window.onbeforeunload = function() {return "Ticket is not submitted yet. Are you sure you want to close?."}
window.onbeforeunload = null // Safe to close window

[Chealer]

Returning a message is deprecated.

[anonyco]

@Chealer until there exists a reliable alternative, it’s deprecated in name only, not in functionality.

[Chealer]

@anonyco : Specifically, it is largely no longer supported. It has the same effect as returning any truthy value, so it is quite misleading.

[leleogere]

As it happened to me for the SECOND time in two weeks, I came up with this little GreaseMonkey (or TamperMonkey/ViolentMonkey) script that simply adds a popup before closing an issue when it has been modified. Note that I've never developed this kind of script so there might be better ways to do that, but here it is if anyone is interested: https://gist.github.com/leleogere/0d021d26bde8ff5fba3006c1d0c309fb

EDIT: Replaced the script by a gist link, unfold this to see the initial script.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Confirm Before Closing Unsubmitted GitHub Issue
// @namespace    None
// @version      1.0
// @description  Warn before closing a tab with an unsubmitted GitHub issue
// @match        https://github.com/*/*/issues/new
// ==/UserScript==

(function () {
    'use strict';

    let hasFormBeenModified = false;

    // Selectors for input fields on the issue form
    const titleSelector = '#issue_title';
    const commentSelector = '#issue_body';

    // Monitor input fields for changes
    const monitorChanges = () => {
        const titleField = document.querySelector(titleSelector);
        const commentField = document.querySelector(commentSelector);

        if (titleField && commentField) {
            titleField.addEventListener('input', () => {
                hasFormBeenModified = true;
            });
            commentField.addEventListener('input', () => {
                hasFormBeenModified = true;
            });
        }
    };


    // Warn user when trying to close the tab
    window.addEventListener('beforeunload', (event) => {
        if (hasFormBeenModified) {
            const message = 'This issue has not been submitted, are you sure you want to leave?';
            event.returnValue = message; // Standard for older browsers
            return message; // For modern browsers
        }
    });

    // Initialize the script after DOM is fully loaded
    window.addEventListener('load', () => {
        monitorChanges();
    });
})();

[paponius]

Undo the Tab close: Ctrl-Shift-T if it was closed, or navigate to ...issues/new page again in the same Browser Tab.
The text is auto-recovered when you open the Issue again. But it must be opened from the same Browser Tab.
It does not matter if another page was opened in that Tab meanwhile. Until you close the last Browser window, the text should still be present in Session Storage in one of opened or closed Tabs.

Go open the Issue again, copy the URL, paste it in each Tab where it might have been opened before, restore closed Tabs/Windows, do the same in them until you see the draft Issue recovered.

The same goes for the workaround with Session Storage from above.
Every tab has it's own. You must look in the right tab and a github.com page must be opened in it.

This is different with Discussions, where text is stored upon tab close into Local Storage, then retrieved when that page is opened again even after PC restart.

@leleogere do you have this in a git or would you put it somewhere it can be edited? It needs fixing.

1. elements ID are not stable. I see :r1l:, :r6:, :r1q:
2. @match https://github.com/*/*/issues/new*
   for issues with a template: ...issues/new?template=bug_report.md

[leleogere]

@paponius I replaced the script with a gist link: https://gist.github.com/leleogere/0d021d26bde8ff5fba3006c1d0c309fb

I've modified the @match as you said, as well as the new element IDs. Not sure if there is a better way to do that other than regularly checking that the ID of the fields do not change. Feel free to comment on the gist if you see other issues, or fork it to suit your needs!

EDIT: It is not easy as it seems, and won't work reliably. Have a look at the discussion below the linked gist to get more details.

[dudarboh]

I have lost an hour-long draft, and just want to complain here.
I hate my life.

[leoschwarz]

This is still an issue in 2025 unfortunately. There is no prompt at all when closing the tab/window and no way to restore the issue content. Because it does not happen with repos without issue template, I forgot about it and ended up losing my issue text completely.

[paponius]

for others following this issue, until you close the browser all together, you can undo the closed tab/window along with a session storage, where the draft is stored.

[leoschwarz]

@paponius This only works if the repository had no issue template. If it has an issue template, you edit the issue in a overlay popup and when you navigate away there is no entry in the session storage about it.

Whatsover in the case when it does work, GitHub does behave as expected and when I go again to "create issue" in the repository, it displays my previous content. This is why I find it so confusing that the create issue will sometimes wipe my content and in other cases it does not (but I think it would be better to store these non-empty issues as a "draft" in all cases).

[leoschwarz]

So it turns out, when you get the pop up there is a "link" button.

If you click it, and paste the URL into a new tab you get a dedicated page to create the issue (after selecting the template you want to use) which has the behavior of persisting your changes in the session storage.

[paponius]

Then it must be because of something else. And not connected with an Issue with a template, or an Issue using a JS popup.
Just tested again (Mozilla):

1. https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues
2. "New issue"
3. "Bug report"
4. edit the title and description, added "foo"
5. close the tab
6. Undo close tab: Ctrl+Shift+T
7. "New issue"
8. "Bug report"

draft is shown with text "foo".
in Session storage, there are two entries including text "foo": "Tampermonkey-tampermonkey.bug_report.md.create-issue-title" and "Tampermonkey-tampermonkey.bug_report.md.create-issue-body"

[leleogere]

While I tried to get an automatic way to prevent closing an unsubmitted issue, it was not as easy as I thought to reliably detect a "new issue" page. As a workaround, and waiting for GitHub to implement a proper solution, you can use a simple bookmarklet to manually "lock" a tab, so that it will ask for confirmation before closing or navigating away.

Simply create a new bookmark, and in the URL field input:

javascript:(function(){window.onbeforeunload=function(){return 'Are you sure you want to leave this page?';};alert('Tab locked.');})();

Now, when you start to write a new issue (or any website you do not want to close by mistake), do not forget to first click your new bookmark, so that the browser will warn you before closing that tab. It might not be as convenient as an automatic trigger, but that's better than nothing!

Important note: It might not work with all browsers. Also, in some browser such as Firefox, you will need to interact once with the page after clicking the bookmark so that the beforeunload callback is correctly registered by the browser (simply clicking once anywhere on the page should be sufficient).

Extensions like Page Lock might be another alternative.

[rickchristie]

Lost a lot of work. Still no auto-save draft feature. All websites have this. It's 2025 :(
GitHub can probably can write an internal copilot issue that saves the data to the browser's persistent local storage.

[Nubebuster]

I recently had Firefox crash on me (don't use snap, use apt), and I went seeking in Firefox state cache files and it was a miserable time wasting endeavour. I did not manage to reconstruct the input state.

Truly a necessity. I now meticulously move over my drafts half way in when it clicks that I have invested quite some time in a draft that could become dust in the wind in a blink of an eye.