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!
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.
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.
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.
What even is a good alternative save icon these days?! This is the only save icon I know.
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
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
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.
Realistically the icon could br anything, even the green check emoji: ✅
But if we want to retain the thematic reference to a disk- icon-ify an m.2 2230 or similar and literally just swap em. lol
Image for reference:

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.
Up arrow to a cloud, or down arrow to a platter (which, ironically, is also out-of-date)
nice try Microsoft
Vomits
Hard to disk drives are still around but you might want to make it look generically like a generic that could also be an SSD just as easy
The difficult part would be depicting a SSD. It’s just a rectangle.
Maybe put a folder inside the rectangle?
The chip icon, you know the one next to the other chip icon.
Congratulations on the drugs, I guess
That or posting on mobile while sleep deprived as fuck. Rereading a post made in bed the night prior is always a humbling experience.
Hey they tried! 😂
This:
Or a Christian cross (“Jesus saves”)
A frog from Mother 3
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
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.
It’s time we upgrade the icon to Zip drives, or maybe Sony memory sticks.
☁️ is a (rather terrible) way to indicate cloud saving.
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.
SD card?
I’ve seen an SD card used before.
A princess in a tower guarded by a dragon, with a knight holding a sword getting ready to swing at the dragon.
parchment & quill 📜🪶
A disc is also been used for some.
Man, if only it dispensed actual drinks. But yeah, it used to dispense your whole digital life on 1.44MB. Good times.
An SSD. But not an M.2 because that might be confused for RAM.
A blank rectangle wouldn’t be confusing at all though.
My ssd is literally a 1tb small keychain… There’s too much variation.
Would need to have some sort of drive icon - maybe? - that is unlikely to ever be forgotten… with a down arrow embedded inside.
Hmmm.
That’s a download button, an up arrow on the disk is an upload
The save icon is too established to be changed. It can be simplified and become a glyph no one understands the meaning of, but it’s cemented
Loading circle then checkmark next to filename