SnapArtboardsToPixels

Every time I want to do something straightforward, it doesn't work as expected, and I have to search the internet to find a solution.  I've been unable to quickly find a solution to Affinity's latest bizarre refusal to work logically.
Here's what I'm trying to do.  copy one layer into a mask layer.  I though it would just be a case of click the layer to copy, select all, copy (tried both ctrl c and copy flattened), then right click on the mask layer and choose 'edit mask', then paste..........Nope, doesn't like it...it's completely nonsensical.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?  
Affinity, if you're listening, for the love of all that is holy, PLEASE make your software intuitive.

I have realized this few weeks ago: I purchased Photo (and Designer) few years ago yet I use it pretty much never. (One might say I am an ideal customer.)
The reason being I can't do *hit in it. I suspected (and still kinda do) I have way too little patience and I didn't blame the application, thinking "it is for people who use it professionally" instead. But recently I shared this impression with a friend of mine, who has CGI (3d mostly) as a job, and he laughed and said he's the same story: purchased Affinity Photo but couldn't befriend it.
I am not a professional myself. Usually I just need to crop an image, maybe insert a text or slap one part photo over another. Maybe I am not the target user...?
Recently I learned SketchUp in matter of minutes, and I am doing sufficient progress in Blender. While Blender has a very questionable UX and some very inconsistent aspects of work, I was able to make just enough progress simply by looking around the UI to get hooked before I had to go looking-up howtos.
So today I gave Photo a shot again, and I failed again. If any of you Affinity guys care how you are (possibly) losing future customers...
(Note that I don't seek a particular how-to here, that's not my point.)
I have a texture of a wooden cladding, I want to create a bump map from it. So I created a selection of area that I want to use in the resulting bump texture, now I want to preserve the selection somehow so I can bring it back later. I know I could save it into a file and insert it when needed. But there must be a better way
Maybe I can store it as a layer? Layer / Duplicate Selection (Ctrl+J) - OK, this looks promising - click - nothing... No feedback whatsoever.
Was a layer created somewhere? (In that case some kind of a layer manager should reveal itself.)
Am I somehow in a "wrong" mode that prevents doing that? (In that case I shouldn't be allowed to click the item in menu or I should get a warning message.)
OK, I am too stupid for layers.
A channel? Select / Save Selection / As Spare Channel... Okay, maybe we're on to something. Click. NO FEEDBACK AT ALL. Again?
(I couldn't find anything resembling Object from Selection. Also I couldn't figure out how to display the layer manager, there has to be one I guess...?)
At this point I am not sure if the application is bugged somehow or if it is only a matter of bad UX and an impatient non-pro user, but I am already running out of patience. This was supposed to be a 7 min job, 4 of those dedicated to cleaning up the selection/mask.
Another, a minor one, example that just popped in my head: I have an image in clipboard, and when I start Affinity Photo mere Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert should be all the application needs to figure out what I am trying to do. Affinity Photo does nothing, and has me chasing menus instead. Edit? File? OK here it is, but really, Ctrl+V yet the app does not know what I want to do?
Now I am back to looking for an alternative for an alternative to Photoshop, knowing I have Affinity Photo installed but I can't do *hit in it. I am convinced the Personas concept is simply a bad idea, and the app can't even do updates, instead it keeps asking me to download an installation archive. And every time I submit and click the Download button I am praying this update brings the functionality of (optional) updates instead of manual download+installs. But I suspect only the next gen of Affinity will have that, and given my experience with this generation I doubt I will waste the money.
I bet most of the people on these forums will defend the UX, but maybe there are significant numbers of users who give up without even leaving a note.
Cheers

Ad 1) Why don't you use Force Pixel Alignment (with unselect Move By Whole Pixels)? 

I was enjoying the non-freezing while working on Windows! I'm back on my Mac now and it's still freezing upon export even with v2..."sigh"

Any progress on this feature? It is imperative to design many various logo types. 

So I know there's a thread that has been going on since 2018 asking for this, but your Twitter social manager mentioned posting again Being able to import palettes, similar to brushes, is such a key feature that's missing from the iPad version of Affinity Designer and Photo, and it's honestly a painfully awful user experience not having it. Please add this to your roadmap to increase QoL for your users and to help your apps have a greater impact, as I'm positive a lot of people would appreciate it.
Thanks!

I'll be thinking HARD on throwing out money again for an Affinity app, if V.2 ever comes out and they charge again for it, as rumors say :)) You can find the workaround in my year old post. Aka. let it crash 2-3x, then DON'T turn off your mac. After every mac restart, it WILL crash 2-3x.
While I do understand Affinity has a staff of 10 or so, I do not consider it OK to let errors like this linger for a full year or more. And other bugs too that make you lose money and time to find workarounds.

It's crazy how often the answer with Affinity is "You can't"

You're not missing anything. If you need to know what brush you used, and what size, I think you'll have to keep notes.

It's crazy how often the answer with Affinity is "You can't"

+1 for this, it would be extremely handy to have a button that would set that slice dimensions to match the canvas/document. I'm exporting product shots, there are about 40 dog collars that all need to be the same final dimensions, but they take up different dimensions within the document. I have to manually drag the boundaries of every slice to make this happen.

I am exhausted.  I have a file that has 400 layers, perfectly sized and placed.  Now i have to export each one individually!  THIS IS CRAZY!
Why cant Persona export just the visible area?  
Am I missing something?

Honestly, this is absurd. If I wanted to export all of the layers and ignore the document sizing, crop, and positioning that I've made then all Affinity Photo is doing is exporting the original photos back into new files. That's not exporting layers... that's exporting source images back into new files of the same source images! I cannot believe that such a basic Export Layers function is missing when it is absolutely required by just about anyone working with photography for websites. The Export Persona tool is a weird and complicated side step to make you manually do the thing you were trying to automate... but then it doesn't even do that. It doesn't slice to the dimensions of the document, it just goes back to source for every layer. So why bother "slicing"?. I just can't figure out how anyone thought this makes sense? This is a design tool, not a super complicated graphic format conversion app.

Same for me, it seemed like that the local export was working but now I've noticed that both are crashing during most exports.

This is such a bad implementation.
A) Snap to pixel alignment isn't working for me, I don't know why, I assume something else in the snapping is overriding it. I have spent the day rounding off numbers, and then accidentally one board that was imperceptibly an extra pixel wide.
B) Even if it was working, all we really want it to not have to think about this and the sheer volume of people talking about this issue shows that it just doesn't work.
I have just moved over and used designer all week so it's crazy that of the hundreds of features I have used this is the thing that is making me want to move back. I guarantee you that most people working in the software want a grid of artboards and not to have to think about if they will export at 1081px or 1921px. They don't want to toggle a (finicky) setting on and off just to duplicate boards, I have literally never wanted to have one artboard placed 0.1px below the other in 20 years of doing this, just make artboards snap to pixel by default.

This seems to be much better, I'll come back if it crashes but I just worked with it for an hour and it didn't crash. Before it never lasted that long.

Same for me, it seemed like that the local export was working but now I've noticed that both are crashing during most exports.

I currently using Affinity Designer on Mac Air M1 and almost every time I do export some of my artboard in export view my cursor turn in to loading phase (infinity loading). So I have to Force Quit the software then open again and export again. Even it has infinity loading again after the force quit and reopen the software. it never happen when I use my old mac air with intel processor. What is actually happening and what should I do to get smooth exporting experience as before?

I need to add that the same issue is happening when saving to my desktop.

Photo is now unusable. Every file that is opened old or new causes it to crash to the spinning rainbow and has to be force quit. Using a 16" MacBook Pro running Mac OS 11.6.
HELP!!!

Thank you for the feedback of this issue you are having I will follow your work flow and test this on my M1 MacBook Air

I've actually just posted about the same issue. I didn't notice this thread. I'm on an Intel chip but having the same issue.

I can't believe how much I've wasted trying to destructively crop 40 layers of images. 

I need to export cropped section as individual files.
And currently I am doing that via Export Persona > Slices

There is no way to Rasterize and Trim multiple layers
There is no way to destructively crop the image.
My only option is to individually Rasterize and Trim each (40+) layers.
Why? 

I mean I know I can't complain at the price bout the suite but just why?
Why do you make it so unintuitive and difficult to use?

Photo is a usability disaster everywhere I look. It is crazy. Even rudimentary features are incredibly time-consuming and illogical to use.
Simply add an option like in Adobe Photoshop, so anyone knowing he/she actually wants to perform a destructive crop can do it on the spot:

Who would immediately think "I will need to rasterize my bitmap photo and trim it to get rid of the area I never wanted Photo to keep anyway" ?
Finally the same confused customer can get the option to resize to "200,3 pixels" ... "Que?"

@Leigh: a way to delete nodes in the way you described would be much appreciated. Most users work with one hand one the keybaord (usually at the left side) and one on the mouse. Not needing to move the left hand across the entire keyboard (and thus losing the hovering position on the left side) or having to take the right hand off the mouse helps to increase operating speed and is also less tiring. It's those little UI/UX things that are preventing pro users from working comfortably in AD.