GUI "saving' indicator that doesn't affect figure

I am making a GUI that serves as a tool for researchers in parsing/visualizing data. The work that they do within the GUI needs to be saved at the end of their session. To do this, I am saving the figure that the GUI exists within ( savefig() ). I'd like to create a save indicator, as there are rather large data sets that take significant time to save. However, anything I have tried involves changing the current figure (i.e. set(gcf, 'pointer', 'watch') or changing the text of the save button to "saving..." prior to the execution of the savefig() call) meaning that the watch pointer is stuck on when the saved figure is opened, or the saved figure has a pushbutton labelled "saving...".

Does anyone have any suggestions for how to better approach this? I realize the more elegant way would be to implement a save feature that just saves the data and then a load feature which imports and loads the data, but I am trying to avoid this for other reasons.

Answer 1

[David Barry]

If you want to display progress then take a look at creating a waitbar. Alternatively you could always create a new figure on top of the one you are saving to display some form of busy status text/icon.

[DrewVam55]

Not the best as I can't have the waitbar move at all during the save, but it at least lets the user know that it the program is busy saving something. Just going to open it at 0.5 before saving then right after change the message to 'complete' and 1.0.

Thanks