An arrow pointing up at a line. Preferably with each being a different colour.
The arrow indicates movement. The line is abstract. But with the colour coding it carries the idea of ‘putting the thing into the other thing’.
The rest is learned pattern recognition. A download is a down arrow in a circle because you are taking the thing from the other thing. So saving is an arrow to a line because you are putting the thing in the other thing.
My vote is just a cylinder. It’s been used for the hard drive activity light for decades already so shouldn’t be too much of a leap. Doesn’t look like any piece of technology.
What’s a hard drive? Is that like iCloud or something?
That’s already the symbol of a data store, so if you hit it I’d expect it to bring up the connection configuration
What a save!
Probably an arrow pointing down inside of a circle, like the download icon. Most of the software I use just has text saying “Save file” and no icon, and I usually press control + S anyways so I don’t have much of an opinion regarding this
I think the download icons will become synonymous with saving. It’s functionally the same, move thingy to a location on your computer.
If the floppy disk was no longer the save symbol for software, and I had to chose one, I’d chose the floppy disk symbol.
But you worded your question wisely to avoid that loophole, so I’m not sure what to use instead for an otherwise unique and ubiquitous symbol, already known as “the save file icon” for two generations that have not seen it.
While we’re at it, let’s also replace the phone icons with a rectangle, as to not confuse anyone.
A cassette tape.
Hahahaha, dammit you win
Probably an arrow pointing to a hard drive.
Why a hard drive? Storage is moving to solid state. That icon would also be obsolete in a few years.
The word ‘save.’ Never understood why software moved on from words.
Not having to translate symbols would be one reason.
They just force their users to translate their dumb symbols they use because there are so many illiterates out there.
🤔 do illiterate people even use computers?
can they??
Arrow to disk.
Why a disk? Storage isn’t even disk shaped anymore.
“Disk” means a memory chip here.
Let’s be real, when some shitty company (MS) gets around to it, it will be: ☁️⬆️
The concept of saving is itself antiquated. Your data should always be saved.
A CD image. Got to move with the times.
Isnt it the glorious zip disks turn first?
A quill
We’re going even more old fashioned.
“Saving” a file should already be obsolete.
Filesystems should automatically retain history, so whenever you edit something it’s already saved, with the ability to go back to any previous state.Oh hell no… You want the computer to decide where your files live??? Autosaving and saving are different things, you do need both
And version control on a filesystem is neat, but you’d still have to save it to a place. Perhaps you save it to a version controlled place, so you’re not version controlling things that don’t need to be tracked and filling up your entire disc when steam games update
It’s your responsibility as the human to make decisions like this. It can be made easier with tools and clean workflows, but if you let the computer do it automatically you’re giving up control and understanding
It’s how we lose tech literacy
No, please. I NEVER want a computer to take a decision for me (like save or discard changes). I turned off auto saving on Microsoft Office on my work computer after I unknowingly made some changes in a presentation from another team I was just looking at, and it saved those changes without my knowledge nor consent.
I work with several screens, have several windows of different programs open and, unfortunately, sometimes a keystroke doesn’t go where I thought I was sending it (I’m probably getting old). Also sometimes windows from a different program come to focus unannounced and capture whatever you were typing or clicking.
Wouldn’t that take a huge amount of space?
