@rdenney
OK, here's how it's supposed to work - and not supposed to work. The fact is that a lot of people mistake this for autosave, which it isn't, so it's necessary to establish this first - not necessarily for you, but for all the others reading this.
Disclaimer: I haven't seen a crash in ten years, and I'm not yanking the power cord just to prove a point. So I can't test this - but by all accounts, this works as designed.
First of all, you need to save the file to disk once. This way the autorecovery folder isn't flooded with files you just open and dismiss again.
Then, after the specified time interval has elapsed, 5 minutes to an hour, a recovery file is created and stored in the system TEMP directory. It's updated at the same intervals.
Here's the thing: When Photoshop closes in a regular and normal shutdown sequence, the contents of the autorecovery folder is deleted. If the application crashes, the OS crashes, or the power is cut, the folder is not emptied; there isn't time.
When Photoshop starts up, it looks in the Autorecovery folder. If there's anything there, it's opened automatically. Normally, there won't be anything there and the folder is empty.
So it always needs to be asked: Did you save the file first? Did the specified time interval pass before the crash?
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