# Saving Designs


> How Kanvas persists your work, what the save indicator is telling you, and how to save a copy.



While you are signed in, Kanvas saves for you. There is no save button you must remember to press before closing the tab: every change you make to a design - adding a component, moving it, editing its configuration, drawing a relationship, renaming the design - is persisted to your account as you make it.

That leaves two things worth knowing: how to tell whether a change has actually landed, and how to deliberately create a second, separate copy.

## The save indicator

The indicator beside the design name reports the state of the design against your account.

| Indicator | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Cloud with a tick, plus a brief "Saved" | Every change is persisted. Hovering shows how long ago the last save completed. |
| Circling arrows, plus "Saving..." | A change is in flight. |
| Struck-through cloud, plus "Unable to save. Retrying..." | A save failed. Kanvas retries on its own; the message clears once one succeeds. |

If the indicator sits on "Unable to save" for more than a moment, stop making changes until it clears - your recent edits exist only in the browser until a save succeeds. The usual causes are a lost connection to Layer5 Cloud or an expired session.

Clicking the indicator forces a save immediately rather than waiting for the next automatic one.

<figure>
  <img src="../images/audit-2026-09/designer-autosave.png" alt="Autosave indicator showing Saving… beside the design name" />
  <figcaption>Anonymous capture (Sep 2026): the save indicator reads <strong>Saving…</strong> while the design syncs. Notification toasts from a recent Validate may also appear in this view.</figcaption>
</figure>

## Save history

Hovering the save indicator on a saved design offers **View Save History**, which opens the design's version history. Because saving is continuous, history rather than manual save points is how you get back to an earlier state of a design.

## Save as

**Save as...** in the file menu creates a *new* design from what is currently on the canvas. You give the copy a name, Kanvas stores it as a separate design owned by you, and the canvas switches to that new design - so any further edits go to the copy, not to the original.

Use it to:

- take a private working copy of a design someone shared with you,
- branch a design before making a change you may not keep,
- turn a design opened from the catalog into one of your own.

**Save as...** is disabled while the canvas is empty.

<figure>
  <img src="../images/audit-2026-09/designer-file-menu.png" alt="File menu listing Save as… and other design operations" />
  <figcaption>File menu (hamburger): New, Open, Import, <strong>Save as…</strong>, Export, Share, View in Operator, Details, and Delete.</figcaption>
</figure>

## Signed out

Saving requires an account. If you are working in Kanvas without signing in - in the playground, for example - the design lives in your browser only. [Exporting the design](/kanvas/designer/export-designs/) is how you keep it.

***

### See Also

* **[Sharing Designs](/kanvas/designer/sharing/):** Give other people access to a saved design.
* **[Exporting Designs](/kanvas/designer/export-designs/):** Take a design out of Kanvas as a file.
* **[Publishing Designs](/kanvas/designer/publishing-designs/):** Offer a design to the catalog.