Is there a way to disable the autosave in UE4?
Yes. Go to:
Edit > Editor Preferences > Loading & Saving > Autosave
IS there a way to make autosave run in the background instead of sitting defiantly in the middle of the screen preventing the user from working?
No way. Editor is saving current state of the engine. If you’ll change something during saving process - this may break state of assets which were already saved. However, having “Cancel” for auto-save would be really nice. Auto-save timer doesn’t work correctly in many situations, for example - when I’m importing a complex scene, what takes a very long time, auto-save may be triggered immediately after import.
Is it possible to only run the dialog in unreal engine window? currently when I focus in firefox reading some the webpage, this autosave will also pop up, which is distracting, I think that is also the reason some people like me want to turn it off.