Divax

Window - zoom works! I can see it all again. Amazing!! Thank you!!

The majority of the Noto fonts can be disabled via Font Book app, at least on Ventura. I have now only 4 entries in the font list that cannot be disabled.
And yes, like many other (useless) system fonts that cannot be turned off, hovering over those four can still cause a spinning beachball for a few seconds until they have been loaded into memory. 
Make sure to mark all fonts you intend to use frequently as your Favorites, then switch to the respective section of the menu to get Apple's rubbish out of your way.

Try Window > Zoom and see if that gives you back your panels.
I'm not sure what you mean about the menu being missing, as it's shown in your last screenshot.

Ok thanks for trying. What I lost were curves that had been converted into pixels (flattened) and then freehand colouring done on them. Everything pretty much disappeared out of the blue. 

Here's a link to a private Dropbox folder - https://www.dropbox.com/request/Axg5VaA7vobpsDvveBgE
Can you let me know once you've uploaded it as I do not get a notification

It means that it relies on the hardware to perform tasks normally done via software. Using Metal, which is Apple's graphics technology, is faster than doing it via software but it has been the source of a lot of issues.
Certain operations in Affinity will be slightly slower with it off but it's one of the first things that Serif might suggest you try with an issue like this.
Good luck

Hi @Divax,
Are you able to upload your Designer file so we can take a look to see what may be going on?

Absolutely, that's no problem at all...

Feel free to send me a DM if you'd like to by clicking on my name or if you'd prefer someone from the Serif team to take a look you can request a Private Dropbox link by replying to this post...

Serif will provide a private dropbox link if they're able to take a look at your files. Just hang on until they've had a chance to read your post.
In the meantime, it would be helpful if you could share a screenshot of your Performance settings. Go to Preferences/Settings and click Performance.
Good luck

Thanks so much for helping us test pre-release builds of our apps. The idea of the beta program is to primarily identify any bugs and issues we have introduced in the latest version or find problems where any new functionality in the apps is not performing as expected. We would also love to hear your feedback on any of the new features / improvements, and suggest any ways in which those features could be improved further. Below are some pointers...

Reporting bugs

If you do come across any bugs here are a few pointers on the best way to report them so we can quickly replicate and investigate a fix for the problem…
Check that you are using the latest version of the beta. We will be releasing regular new builds (every 7-14 days) and it's quite possible your issue has already been fixed. Please let us know which app, operating system and device you are using. If you are happy to do so, and to save repeating yourself on each post, it's a great idea to include this information in your signature. You can do this via your forum account settings If the issue relates to any of the new functionality in the app, please go to the relevant post about that feature and report your bug in that thread If the issue relates to anything else please post in the general bugs area here. If certain steps need to be followed to reproduce the problem, please explain that as clearly as possible If the issue relates to a specific document please either attach to your post (preferable) or if you would prefer to not share the document publicly but are happy to share directly with us let us know on your post and we'll DM you for it. If the bug involves a crash and you are given the option to send us a crash report, please do that as it really helps with our diagnostics. Even if you do send an automatic crash report it is still valuable to us for you to report the crash as a bug on the forum too. Giving feedback
If you think there are ways we could make the experience of any of the new functionality better we would love to hear about it. Please keep this within scope of the improvements we have made, and post that feedback in reply to the relevant new feature / improvement post. We will do our best to take this feedback on board and if it's sensible / we have time we will certainly look at it - whether for the current update cycle or to have on our list for a future update.

Please bear in mind the beta forums are not for giving new feature suggestions which are outside of what have been added to the beta. You can give any new feature or improvement suggestions in our feedback forum for consideration in a future update cycle.

Other than that we hope you enjoy testing out our latest developments. If you have not enrolled into the beta program yet and would like to take part, you can do so here. This will immediately give you access to the latest 2.4 beta builds to try for yourself. If you have any questions about this or anything to do with the beta program please post in this members area for us / the community to respond to.

Thanks again for taking part!

Ash 

Hello @Divax,
😉It's the job that's coming in. Serif may be able to recover the initial file, but nothing is less certain.
Using a beta version of any software does indeed entail risks, including the possibility of encountering bugs that are not present in the stable version. This is precisely the purpose of beta testing: to discover these problems before the final version is released.
Saving the document created with a stable version is therefore an important step in beta testing. However, beta testing cannot do without working in real-life conditions, as this alone can often uncover malfunctions that cannot be detected with a summary document.
Our role as beta testers requires us to test in real-life situations. These preliminary versions, although unstable and likely to contain anomalies, are an indispensable playground for detecting problems that only manifest themselves in real-life situations, and which would sometimes go unnoticed on documents that are too sketchy.
Bests,