# File recovery

File recovery is a core plugin that helps you recover your work in the case of unintentional data loss, by regularly saving snapshots of your notes.

To avoid taking up too much space, Obsidian keeps snapshots for a certain number of days before deleting them.

Snapshots are kept in the Global settings, outside of the vault, to account for vault-related data loss. This means that snapshots are stored with the absolute path to the note. If you've moved your vault recently, you may need to move it back to the location where it was when the snapshot was taken.

# Recover a snapshot

1. Open Settings.
2. In the sidebar, select File recovery under Plugin options.
3. Next to Snapshots, select View.
4. In the upper-left text box, start typing the name of the file you want to recover, and you will see a suggestion list.
5. Select the file, press Enter, and you'll see a list of snapshots available.
6. Select the snapshot you want to recover.
7. Select Copy to clipboard to copy the snapshot.
8. Paste the snapshot in the original note, or in a new note if you want to compare them.

# Clear snapshot history

1. Open Settings.
2. In the sidebar, select File recovery under Plugin options.
3. Next to Clear history, select Clear.
4. Confirm that you want to delete all snapshots, by clicking Clear.