Issue 749: auto-save cover message comments
Status:  New
Owner: ----
Reported by t...@google.com, Oct 8, 2010
Cover message comments are likely to be longer than other comments.  The other day I typed in a long comment that for various reasons required a lot of care in crafting.  When I hit "publish" gerrit said "Not signed in".  When I signed in, all of my work was gone!

Note that this would be less of a problem if you implemented:

https://code.google.com/p/gerrit/issues/detail?id=16

But even that change wouldn't protect against browser crashes, etc.
Dec 13, 2010
Project Member #1 fredrik....@sonyericsson.com
I think there is several ways to work around this. One way is to craft the message in a separate editor and then paste it into the comment field once you're done. This way you keep a copy outside the browser all the time.
Another way is to actually press the save button every now and then, and then immediately open the message for further editing again. When you save the message, it is put in draft mode, that is, nobody else will see it until you actually submit an entire review. So intermediary saves are possible.
I don't want to sound like I don't want this feature, I wouldn't mind it at all, but it seems your problem also could be solved by changing your habits slightly.