Auto‑Recovery file size limit configuration in Illustrator

Goal

Prevent uncontrolled growth of Auto‑Recovery files on shared workstations while preserving the ability to recover unsaved work after unexpected shutdowns.

Constraints & Uncertainty

Illustrator’s Auto‑Recovery creates a new file each time a crash is detected, appending ‘_recovered’ and an incremented suffix when retries fail. The Preferences dialog exposes a configurable interval but offers no upper bound on the total size or number of recovery files that can accumulate. This lack of a size limit can lead to significant disk consumption, especially when users repeatedly crash or retry saves on cloud documents.

Specific Questions

1. Is there an undocumented preference or command‑line switch that allows setting an upper bound on the combined size of all Auto‑Recovery files?
2. What is the maximum number of recovery files Illustrator retains for a single document, and does this number reset after a successful save?
3. Can a script or third‑party tool safely prune obsolete recovery files without risking loss of recoverable data?