this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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What even is a good alternative save icon these days?! This is the only save icon I know.
Edit: lmao I’ve gotten so many replies! I love y’all.
Set it in stone.
...maybe something more basic like this:
Back then the version control really was v2 Final Final. The good ol days.
We still do that level of version control. But we used to, too
Sorry for the convenience
A floppy disk is fine, just like Photoshop uses terms like dodge and burn, references to obsolete dark room methods, like cutting and “pasting” were literally how some layout projects worked.
Referencing the last physical incarnation of saving a file seems fitting!
Pretty harsh to the compact disc don't you think?
You don't save to a CD, you burn it
You could to a CD-RW, kind of.
CD wasn't even the last physical media that was adopted widely. Technically I think that may be thumbdrives for now, but there were some tape and disc shaped, but high density for the time (like 20MB to 100MB for the disk shaped one, and 1GB to 2GB tapes.) and named something I don't remember, media options that were created in the late '90s early '00s before thumbdrives became a thing.
What about MicroSD? Still being put on game consoles and smartphones to this day.
Zip disk/zip drive? wiki link
I did photography at college a few years before digital technology took off. The old dodge and burn was way more fun. There was no undo button so you had to remember what gets done where and keep refining the print. It took ages. And the chemical smells were amazing!
Up arrow to a cloud, or down arrow to a platter (which, ironically, is also out-of-date)
Vomits
nice try Microsoft
You just described upload and download, not save.
Up arrow to Lakitu.
It's just the download button, truly. They already associate that icon with saving files from the web. The down arrow pointing to a rectangle or laptop icon in word or similar app wouldn't be too ambiguous...
Or, truly, the floppy will just become a nebulous, originless heiroglyph meaning "keep this information for later and let me put it somewhere to find it again," and some Gen. Beta child will get curious and learn about ye olde days of magnetic media from Wikipedia.
sometimes there is a arrow going into a folder
but then again noone knows what the foldwe icon is supposed to depict nowadays either
That's the icon for the Downloads Folder
Maybe a life preserver ring won’t become out of date? 🛟
That's 'Help', not 'Save'
This is Help
cool, now we got a reference older than the 3.5 inch floppy
Well ackshually this picture spells "NUJV"
Maybe their spelling is what they need help with 🤔
Yeah but that's awfully anglo-centric. Saving life has nothing to do with saving a file in other languages.
☁️ is a (rather terrible) way to indicate cloud saving.
I've seen an SD card used before.
/joke
Lots of open source projects actually have some really good alternatives for it.
It's time we upgrade the icon to Zip drives, or maybe Sony memory sticks.
This:
Or a Christian cross (“Jesus saves”)
I once saw a usb thumb drive as an icon. Guess it didn't take off.
It might be the best actually since they're still around and, never say never, may not go anywhere. Though a USBA icon will confuse the USBC crowd soon enough.
SD card?
Yeah it's old and loses relevance, but we can go older and it circles back to recognizable again
✍️
Or just say the vending machine is because it's a store and you are storing the data when you save