why does autorecover not do anything

This is autorecovery from crash, it is not autosave. The user is still responsible for saving their work. Anything that builds up and accumulates permanent disk storage, which is what you're asking, is not an option. Photoshop eating disk space is already causing complaints as it is.

The whole function is based on recovered files opening automatically on next launch, or being deleted if everything is normal. That's the only way to avoid excessive disk storage buildup.

What we all do is save incrementally every time you're at a point where you don't want to lose work.

I don't know why it isn't working for you. What I can think of is a permissions problem in your Windows user account (where the autorecovery folder is), or that you haven't saved the file at all to begin with. Then it won't work. Try to set it to five minutes instead of ten.

Then what is the point of checking this box? According to your answer, Photoshop deletes this file when it thinks everything is fine. But whatever is making my photoshop crash is apparently makes photoshop think its fine and delete the autorecover file. Why delete the recover file ever? If I check the autosave box, I expect that it's saving a copy of my file every 10 minutes and I can go open it if I need. This would be way more useful than an autorecover that auto-deletes itself. Either that or you should just remove this option from photoshop if its not going to actually function as a timed backup save.

The folder is emptied in an orderly shutdown sequence.

When starting up, Photoshop looks in this folder first, and opens any content automatically. If no files open when Photoshop starts, there is nothing there. There is never any point in opening the recovery folder manually. There won't be anything there.

I haven't seen a crash in ten years, so I haven't tested this myself, but apparently the file needs to have been saved to disk at least once for the process to initiate. Unsaved files will not be recovered.

Crashing is nearly always the GPU/driver. A very common problem is conflicting dual GPUs in laptops. If you post Help > System Info from Photoshop, we may be able to see what the problem is.

It works for me every time. I don't search for files; my approach is to start the app, and it opens the recovered file. Have you tried that?