Disable "Open draft" button so I can always start a new topic

[Renato_Mendes]

Hey, guys!

Can I disable the “Open draft” change on the “New topic” button? Sometimes I want to start a new topic and continue with the draft later, but the platform makes me edit the draft.

Thanks!

[Stephen]

Hey @Renato_Mendes

Any new topic or reply is auto-saved as your current draft, of which you can have only one. The only way to achieve this would be to destroy your current draft.

Sam explains why multiple drafts aren’t possible here:

Allow multiple ‘new topic’ drafts

It is a fundamental limitation of the current design and would require multiple weeks of engineering to amend. Not in our priority list for now. It gets extra complicated cause how do you even start reasoning about multiple post drafts on a single topic, the cognitive overhead is huge. I think this all stems from the expectation that a topic can have N drafts. Given the underlying limitation where topics can only have 1 draft, this is the only way to solve it. If we allowed you to start a sec…

[Moin]

You cannot have more than one draft.

There are some Contribute > Feature topics discussing the option to have more drafts

Allow multiple ‘new topic’ drafts

Following a meeting, I volunteered for two separate tasks, requiring two separate threads. I open a browser tab and begin one of them. I open a second tab to begin the second, and the “New Topic” button is replaced with a “Open Draft” button. I am prevented from beginning my second thread until I post my first thread. This seems counter-intuitive in that one, to my knowledge, there is no way to save and edit drafts in Discourse, and two, it requires me to use a separate app (a text editor) to …

Another option is to write you draft as a messge to yourself, so you can copy the text later. You van even add your draft message to a personal section in the sidebar.

[Stephen]

@Moin

Another option is to write you draft as a messge to yourself, so you can copy the text later. You van even add your draft message to a personal section in the sidebar.

The obstacle there is that if you still have a ‘public’ draft you still can’t post the PM draft publicly until that other post has been published or deleted.

[Moin]

Why don’t you copy that draft to the message?

[Stephen]

If you’re just going to juggle text around you could also use a text editor

[Renato_Mendes]

Hey! Thanks for the answers!

@Stephen

Any new topic or reply is auto-saved as your current draft, of which you can have only one. The only way to achieve this would be to destroy your current draft.

@Moin

You cannot have more than one draft.

That’s weird, because I currently have 4 ongoing drafts:

@Stephen

The only way to achieve this would be to destroy your current draft.

I understand this is a limitation of the mobile app (on my Android, it doesn’t allow me to start a new draft), but on the web it had been possible until yesterday. Maybe it has something to do with drafts of replies vs drafts of new topics? All my 4 drafts are of replies, actually.

@Moin

Another option is to write you draft as a messge to yourself, so you can copy the text later. You van even add your draft message to a personal section in the sidebar.

That’s interesting. But it would really be great if it were possible for a user to have multiple drafts; this way, you’d be able to build your posts without hurry.

[renato (Renato Atilio)]

@Renato_Mendes

Maybe it has something to do with drafts of replies vs drafts of new topics? All my 4 drafts are of replies, actually.

That’s it. You can’t draft multiple replies for the same topic, nor can you have multiple new topic drafts currently. The latter is being tracked on the topic linked above.