Create, Open, and Save Projects
How to create a Solar Sailer project, open an existing one, switch between projects, and keep your work saved.
Create a new project
- Open the File menu and click New Project…, or press Ctrl+N. On the welcome screen, click the New Project… button instead.
- In the save dialog, pick a folder and type a name for your project.
- Click Save.
Solar Sailer writes the project file to disk right away, as a SolarSailer Project (.sailer) file. There is no unsaved "untitled" state. If you cancel the save dialog, nothing changes and the project you had open stays loaded.
:::info Keep the data folder with the project
As you work, Solar Sailer keeps some project data, like transcripts, in a folder named after your project that ends in .sailer.data, next to the .sailer file. When you move or copy a project, move that folder along with it.
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A new project starts empty, with no media and no clips. Your next step is to bring in footage. See Import Media.
Open a project
- Open the File menu and click Open Project…, or press Ctrl+O.
- Pick a
.sailerfile and confirm.
To reopen something you worked on recently, use File → Open Recent. It lists your recent projects by file name. When the list is empty it shows No Recent Projects.
You can also double-click a .sailer file in Windows Explorer. If Solar Sailer is already running, its window comes forward and the project opens there, with the usual unsaved-changes prompt if your current project needs it. If the app isn't running, it starts straight into that project.
The welcome screen also has a Recent Projects section. It shows your five most recent projects as cards, with the project name, its location, and when you last opened it. Click Show all to see the rest of the list, which holds up to ten projects. If a project file has been moved or deleted, its card reads Missing — file not found.
Switch projects
To switch projects, just open another one. The current project closes and the new one loads.
If the current project has unsaved changes, Solar Sailer asks what you want to do first. The prompt names the project and warns that your changes will be lost if you don't save them. It gives you three buttons:
- Save saves the project, then opens the other one.
- Don't Save opens the other project and drops your changes.
- Cancel stays where you are, with your changes intact.
You get the same prompt from New Project…, Open Project…, and Open Recent, and again when you close the window or quit the app. A project with nothing unsaved switches straight over without asking.
The check runs again after the file picker closes. If new edits landed while the picker sat open, for example because the AI assistant kept working, you're asked about those too before the switch goes through.
Switching projects also restarts the AI assistant. Its conversation history does not carry over to the new project.
Save your work
Press Ctrl+S, or open the File menu and click Save. To save the project under a different name or location, use File → Save As… (Ctrl+Shift+S).
While the save writes, a small Saving… dialog with a progress bar sits over the app, then briefly reads Saved with a green checkmark. It appears for saves you start yourself and for the save that runs before closing or switching projects. Autosave stays silent.
The save indicator lives at the bottom-right of the status bar. While a save is running it reads Saving…. After that it reads Last saved: followed by the time. Nothing shows there until the first save of your session. The title bar also keeps you posted: it shows the open project's name, with an asterisk after it, like My Project*, whenever there are unsaved changes. The asterisk disappears once the project is saved.
What gets saved
A save keeps your tracks, clips, media bin, and project settings, and as of 0.3.0 it also keeps the working state you set up around them: markers, In and Out points, the timeline zoom level, and whether snapping is on. Reopen the project and you land where you left off. Playback always starts paused.
Changes to the media bin count as unsaved changes too. Importing, removing, or relinking media and reorganizing the bin's folders all put the asterisk in the title bar until you save.
The project name is saved too, so a reopened project comes back under its own name. Projects saved by an older version come back named Untitled until you save them once in this version.
Save As to a new file renames the project to that file's name, and the title bar updates to match. Re-saving to the same file leaves the name alone.
When a save is refused
A save is refused rather than half-done if you're switching projects at that moment. You'll see Save failed: with a short reason, usually asking you to retry in a moment. Try again once the new project has finished loading. Autosave handles this quietly and picks it up on its next pass.
Edits that land in the middle of a closing save don't slip through either. The close is cancelled and a message asks you to save again, so nothing you did in that moment is silently lost.
:::tip Autosave
Autosave is on by default. You can adjust it in Edit → Preferences… under Autosave. After long operations like Sync or Transcribe, Solar Sailer always autosaves. That one can't be turned off, because losing that work would be expensive to redo.
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