I edited a PDF in Adobe Acrobat on macOS over 10 days.
My changes consistently persisted when I closed and reopened the file, including across app restarts. Because of this, I reasonably assumed the file was being auto-saved or at least checkpointed.

However, when I eventually closed the document and selected “Don’t Save”, all edits from the entire period were permanently lost. There was no recovery option, no AutoSave file, and no previous version available.

What’s confusing is that the app does retain edits for days, which strongly suggests they are saved somewhere. There is no indication that these changes only exist temporarily in the RAM or that they can all be discarded at once.

This behavior feels misleading and inconsistent with modern AutoSave expectations on macOS. If had a windows I would have been able to recover the file somehow .

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open an existing PDF in Acrobat on macOS
2. Make edits (annotations, text, comments)
3. Close and reopen the file over several days (changes persist)
4. Close the file and choose “Don’t Save”
5. Reopen the PDF

Expected
1. Either: Changes can be recovered via AutoSave or versions
or 2. The user is clearly warned that all changes will be permanently lost

Actual
1.All edits are lost with no recovery and no warning, despite having persisted for days.

Impact
This can easily cause major data loss, especially for long-term work (legal, academic, professional) !!!!
The persistence of edits over time creates a false sense of safety.