For determining if a file has been edited since the most recent save, SAS Studio looks for a tilde-appended file in the same directory (e.g. editing myprog.sas creates myprog.sas~ when the autosave interval elapses). If you get prompted upon login that an autosave version exists, then it should always contain your most recent edits to that file.
If you can navigate to the directory where your edited files are saved using a file explorer (Windows, Unix, or Mac), you should see a tilde file with a date/time stamp that is more recent than the last-saved version of that file. Otherwise, you should not get prompted to do anything with the file upon login. What may be happening in your case is that responding 'No' to the prompt at login time causes the tilde file to be retained...you will then get prompted again next time.
I tested this behavior today using Chrome 57, and could not reproduce the case of "every few hours the autosave feature pops up for every one of my tabs, regardless of me editing them or not." It would be great if you could do a quick check for tilde files in your explorer of choice, and clean up any that are not needed. Then log back in to SAS Studio and see how many autosave prompts you get. I don't think this is a Chrome-specific issue, but we will continue to investigate until hearing back from you.
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