How version history works
12 May 2026
When you're drafting a novel, you'll often cut a paragraph and then want it back, or rewrite a chapter more than once. Waxcap™ keeps earlier versions of each document as you go, so you can go back to an older version whenever you need to.
Getting text back
Right-click a document in the sidebar and choose Version History…, or choose File ▸ Version History… for the one you have open. Versions are grouped by day, newest first, each with its time and word count. Select one to read it.
If you only want a paragraph back, select it in the old version, copy it, and paste it into your document. Nothing else changes.
To go back to an old version completely, click Restore and confirm. Restoring is never destructive. Before the older version replaces the current one, Waxcap saves a fresh version of whatever you have right now, so if you change your mind two seconds later your latest text is already in the history and one click away.
When versions are saved
Waxcap saves a version when you open a document, when you move to another one or close the project, and about every ten minutes while you keep writing, so an afternoon spent inside one chapter builds up a history too. If nothing has changed since the last version, no new one is saved.
Versions are kept for documents in the Manuscript and in Reference Material. A document you delete waits in the project's Trash until you empty it, and emptying the Trash removes its history as well.
When two Macs change the same document, the version saved more recently stays in the editor and the other goes into the history, labelled Saved from an iCloud conflict. How iCloud syncing works has the detail.
How long versions are kept
The history is stored inside the project, so it goes wherever the project goes: to your other Macs through iCloud Drive, into Time Machine backups, and into a project archive, the single file of a whole project that File ▸ Export… can save.
Older versions are thinned gradually to keep the project a sensible size. Everything from the last seven days is kept. After that, Waxcap keeps one version a day up to thirty days old, one a week up to six months, and one a month beyond that.