Session autosave

IGV supports the ability to autosave your current session in the igv/autosave directory. These session files can then be loaded through the File > Autosaved Sessions menu.

As of #1327, IGV supports two methods of session autosave:

1. Autosave on exit
2. Timed autosave

Autosave on exit

Whenever you exit IGV, a copy of your current session will be saved to the igv/autosave directory with the name exit_session_autosave.xml. Each time you exit IGV, that file will be overwritten with a new save of the current session.

Autosave on exit is enabled by default. Autosave on exit can be enabled/disabled via View > Preferences > Automatically save session on exit.

Timed autosave

You have the option of enabling a periodic autosave of your current session in IGV. This works by saving a copy of your current session every x minutes to the igv/autosave directory, named in the form session_autosave[timestamp].xml where [timestamp] is the current date and time at the time of the autosave, in ISO 8601 UTC date and time format.

Timed autosave is disabled by default. There are two options in the View > Preferences menu for timed autosave. You can set how often the autosave should be done using View > Preferences > How often, in minutes, to autosave the current session. You can set how many autosave files created by the timed autosave to keep using View > Preferences > How many timed autosave session files to keep. Setting this option to 0 (which is the default) disables timed autosave.

Autoload

IGV provides the option to automatically load your last autosave on startup. This can be enabled using View > Preferences > Load last autosaved session on startup. If this is enabled, when you open IGV, it will automatically load the most recent session file in the igv/autosave directory, if there is one. This setting will, however, be ignored if running IGV from the command line and specifying a file to open on startup.