Auto-save settings are lost when refresh button is clicked in Project Dashboard
One answer
This is working as designed, the Auto-save option is enabled by default for the Dashboards that are not shared, on the other hand for those that are shared it will be disabled by default.
It was created/designed a really long time ago and technically we don't know the full reason of that behavior but apparently we are tied to the current architecture until a restructuring is done, so we are basically stuck with what we have.
Regards!