Hi Sam,

You're not the only one. Another user reported the same "Workspaces Prefetch error: 500" on Free Edition today: https://community.databricks.com/t5/databricks-free-edition-help/free-edition-workspace-errors-quot-...

status.databricks.com shows no open incident right now and lists Free Edition as operational. Still, two identical reports on the same day point to something on the service side, not your browser or account. Incognito, signing in again and opening the URL directly already rule out the usual browser causes.

About losing your work: the Free Edition docs only mention deleting accounts that are inactive for a prolonged period, and that isn't your case since you use it regularly.

What you can do in the meantime:

1. If you have the Databricks CLI set up for this workspace, try exporting your notebooks. The API may respond even when the UI doesn't:

databricks workspace export-dir /Users/your-email ./backup

2. Subscribe to updates on the status page.

3. Free Edition isn't covered by the Databricks support policy or SLA, so the community is the channel here. If the error page shows a TraceId, add it to this thread, as the other user did.

Docs:
Free Edition limitations (inactivity, support and SLA): https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/getting-started/free-edition-limitations
Status page: https://status.databricks.com/
CLI workspace commands: https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/dev-tools/cli/reference/workspace-commands