How to disable auto save option in WordPress

When you are writing / editing posts in WordPress, everything added to the posts is automatically saved every 60 seconds, which is a good thing because you won't lose data.

However, one disadvantage of this functionality is that all changes are saved as post revisions in your WordPress database, which means your database size will grow exponentially, potentially causing performance issues on your site. This article will show you how to disable the auto save option and save space.

Disable autosave in WordPress

To disable autosave in WordPress, follow these steps:

1. Log in to WordPress as the administrator.
2. On the Dashboard in the left sidebar, click Appearance, and then click Editor:

   

3. On the Theme Editor, select the Theme you want to edit from the dropdown:
   

   

4. The files for this selected theme are listed on the right column under Theme Files. Click on the file named functions.php:
   

   

5. Insert the following code to the end of functions.php file and click Update File Button to save the changes:
   

   function NO_auto_save(){
   
       wp_deregister_script('autosave');
   	} add_action( 'wp_print_scripts', 'NO_auto_save' );

   *wp_print_scripts function prints scripts in document head that are in the $handles queue.