Ever get so far in the zone when redoing a drawing that you forget to save, and KiCad just crashes with no warning? An hour’s work, gone.
I think I gonna cry…
Except don’t forget the automatic backups that KiCad makes for you . . .
I’m on Mac… I don’t see anything like an autosave file in the folder.
Don’t know about Mac, I assume its the same as Windows . . . I have a folder in the project folder called
ProjectName-backups
…I was running schematic editor in stand-alone mode, which is how I normally use KiCAD.
(I rarely ever need to create PC boards; I have been mainly reverse-engineering the schematics of various boards)
Ah, thats not a great way to do things. Trying to be positive . . . it’s always quicker doing something for the second time 
This doesn’t matter. “stand-alone mode” still loads the project associated with the schematic or board, and all project features are still present except for the ones that rely on both editors being open.
Running schematic in stand-alone mode may not necessarily be an approved use case, but other than that poorly timed crash, it does what I expect of it, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what counts?
I mean, it’s not like I’m doing something dumb like using the recycle bin as one’s main document folder…
I just tested using the schematic editor standalone on my Mac. I open a schematic standalone, made a small change, and waited 10 minutes (my auto-save timeout setting). I see two files created in the directory with the schematic file; #auto_saved_files# and _autosave-<schematic_name>.kicad_sch. I used a Force Quit of the eeshema application to simulate a crash. These two files remain in the schematic’s directory.
When I relaunched the schematic editor standalone it prompted me with this:
Clicking Yes reloaded the schematic with my change. After I closed the ediitor the autosave files were gone.