I agree this really sucks, and it used to be a huge issue for me. Two comments:

• The cloud version doesn't lose your entries anymore. Even if you close the window, when you come back to it, it'll show you that you have an unsaved entry and recover it for you.
• I don't use Server so i can't say for sure if this will fix the issue. But before the issue was fixed in Cloud, i used a Chrome plugin called Typio Form Recovery - it saved my sanity more times than i can remember. The best part is it works everywhere, not just in Jira.

I can't believe that Jira marked this as just a "won't fix."

I will advocate for Jira alternatives at every opportunity until I can write a ticket without 10 minutes of work disappearing in an instant.

Piling on even though this issue is closed. It happens too frequently, and a lot of people have the problem. IT'S SO FRUSTRATING because it always happens when you're in the zone and have written a lot, and haven't thought to save. 

This is absolutely still occurring in JIRA Cloud. I'm a vi user, and I've lost plenty of text using JIRA. Good times!

An even more fun variant is whatever absurd key remap is used to open the side panel for issue filters. If you fat-finger that key while creating or editing a comment to an issue, you get a popup warning you that your comment will be lost if you navigate away. If you click "Cancel", JIRA mindlessly goes ahead and opens the panel, which causes your comment to be lost. This has occurred FOUR times for me over the past two weeks or so.

Bravo, Atlassian. Top-notch UX here. Force-remap keys to your functions, then lose content when people hit your remapped keys by mistake and (correctly) select "Cancel" to avoid the keymap function they didn't want in the first place.

Why not just randomly spray something noxious when a key is pressed? Or fire needles from the screen? Both would be as useful, and only slightly less desirable than the behavior described in this comment and issue.

It just happened to me though Eugene. I believe it was while editing the description of an existing ticket.

It still happens in some screens, like the "Assign" screen and the "Resolve Issue" screen.

The issue doesn't exist in Jira Cloud with the new interface. Why do you people still complain about it?

Here is what happens to me several times a day on MacOS: I am typing up an issue description and have several-hundred words of carefully researched details in there when a MacOS autocomplete suggestion pops up. In order to dismiss the suggestion I hit esc and the Jira editor closes and all my work is lost 😫

This issue drives me insane.

I'm using a clipboard with multiple entries, useful when editing text. Unfortunatly I use the escape key which, in certains cases, closes the clipboard and my Jira description editing form. 

I would like to point out Trello behaviour on such cases : when hitting escape, the cards description is closed but the content is not lost. If you hit the escape key, the description is not saved, then re-open the card description the content appears in the editing form. It does not survive refreshing or leaving the page but accidentaly hitting escape is safe.

I am also a vim user, and often lose work (especially when I'm tired, and I'm not focused enough). But this also happens to other team members, who definitely do not fall in the VIM user category.

One specific use case I'd like to raise here is if you press CTRL+S, Chrome will open the Save dialog. If you now press ESC, it will close the dialog AND destroy all your changes! So there's more than the "mistype" issue at play here.

This is especially frustrating when we make changes to a Jira issue in a meeting, and this happens. We then lose everyone's time, and this creates lots of frustration against an otherwise excellent tool. Please reconsider, especially since you can always use a good old "confirm" dialog; I tend to believe that "canceling your changes" is much less a typical use case, compared to "losing your changes".