R C-R

I don't remember if this is something I changed or the default but on my Mac the shortcut for Hide Studio is CMD+Shift+H, making it much harder to toggle by accident.

The former is very useful in some workflows where it is desirable to quickly change the layer opacity, for instance when using an upper layer as a reference for creating something on a lower one. Personally, I think the usefulness of the brush opacity shortcut speaks for itself. That said,, I have to admit I am a fan of keyboard shortcuts so YMMV.

And it is one less step than what @Iztok asked for, which was two clicks and delete.

I don't know if this helps but basically, layers are just the containers objects are placed in. No object in the document can exist outside of some containing layer. Some but not all kinds of layers can be 'parent' layers that can contain zero or more 'child' objects, like Group layers, Artboard layers, & capital L Layers. These are often referred to collectively as 'container' objects, for what should be obvious reasons.

What exactly do you mean by a "Document Settings preference"? Many properties are stored within the document itself, so there is no need for a separate preference or setting for that. Pallet positions & keyboard shortcuts are set application wide but view size is not. As for "agency" you explicitly set the first two to whatever you want; so they are not reset without your consent. Consider working on a document with 6 or more master pages & hundreds of document pages. The small size is a good choice when you want to do something that applies to many pages; it reduces the scrolling you need to do to select them all.

YES -- why else would I keep mentioning it & even put it in bold & color the capital L red in an earlier reply??? But please note that the Layer menu is with a few exceptions not a list of layer types. There is a Layers panel where you can see what type of layer each of the layer creation tools has created, & the Tools panel where you can choose among those tools to create new objects or modify existing ones. No. As mentioned multiple times, there are a few container layer types that can contain more than one object but all the other layer types are created on their own individual layers. The main container types are Groups & the previously mentioned capital L Layers which can be created in AD.

Please stop referring to PCB layers & at least answer what I asked about the types of layers you want to create in an Affinity document. This has nothing to do with physical printed circuit boards or how they might be designed or laid out in CAD apps. Each type of layer in Affinity has a name, like Pixel, Image, Rectangle, vectors drawn with the Pen or Pencils tools, etc. BTW, I'm sure you know that PCB's can be single or laminated multi-layer, the latter used for complex circuits where too many jumpers would complicate things when traces have to cross each other, or sometimes for guards with a similar purpose to discrete shielded wiring.

Again, I have to ask what kind of objects you are talking about, & how many objects you think are in any one layer. Most layer types can contain only one object -- IOW, they are not containers for other objects, just individual objects of any of many different types. Also, once again I suggest you provide a simple Affinity document with the 5 layers you mentioned earlier so we can better see what you are talking about. BTW, I not only am familiar with PC boards, I have designed & fabricated them myself. But this has nothing to do with that & it is not helpful to use them as an example. So please supply an Affinity format document with just a few objects demonstrating what you mean.

I still do not know what you mean about all objects being a particular color. For instance, a Pixel or Image layer can have many differently colored pixels. Regardless, it would help to know if by "traditional" layers you mean something other than the capital L Layer container type of object or something else. An example of a 5 layer file you are asking about would help, too.

Would you prefer that it remain sticky on restarts, have an application-wide preference option, or be saved along with each document?

That is part of the problem: a layer may or may not be a group that contains other objects. The capital L Layer object is, like group layers, a type of container, one that (also like group layers) may contain zero or more child objects. As for layer colors, are you asking for a way to change the color of the object(s) themselves, or juat how they appear in the Layers panel? Also, I have no idea what you mean by "I may even want to change the red layer's color to blue but would still need it to be distinguishable from the identical color on the blue layer." If they are identical how could they possibly be distinguished, one from the other.

Why specifically do you think that? There are many application-wide settings, so what makes this one worse than any of the others?

No, as @mattspace mentioned, it is an application setting. You can test this quickly -- just change the thumbnail size & note that the document can be closed without a save warning or showing an asterisk in its name, indicating it has been modified. But I do not think that is a bug, just working as it was designed to do.

Where did you read that? The Info panel is a feature of Affinity Photo. It is not available in Affinity Designer. And in Affinity Photo V2, it is in the Window menu, not the View menu.

Those, too. You can export to TIFF, or place TIFF files in your Affinity document, but Image layers are stored in the Affinity document as layers in its internal format, not as individual files.

@GarryP is right about having the stabilizer on. The triple circle @Ron P. mentioned showing the brush spacing can be enabled on Macs by holding down the CTRL & Option keys, & clicking multiple times before dragging the brush to toggle on-the-fly changes among the width/hardness, shape/spacing, & rotation options for the brush.

That does not help users that only own or routinely use Affinity Photo! Considering the size of some of these files & the limited disk space some users have * to deal with, it is absurd that there is not at least a warning before they are installed that they will not work in AP, nor is there any in-app way to delete them. *EDIT: Compounding the disk space issue, some AP users have installed the same vector brushes multiple times, thinking that something went wrong on the earlier tries.

That is my point. It is something that has come up in several other topics, including ones I have participated in that the staff have confirmed that there is no way for users to identify from the file itself if it contains vector or raster brushes. So unless the user knows from any documentation available for the file, which is not always provided, the only way to find out is to install the file, & even then, as has been mentioned in many different topics over the years, it is all too easy for many users to overlook in the successful message which kind was installed. So minimally, this is not very user friendly & does account for more than a little confusion for some users. Then of course, there is the confusion about installing vector brushes in Affinity Photo, no way provided in the app to remove them once installed, & no indication that they can't be used. Again, far from user friendly.

On my Mac, it is possible to add vector brushes to AP, & get the (not toast!) successful message, but of course those brushes are not available, nor is there any in-app way to remove them. So basically, AP should not permit one to even start downloading vector brushes, much less report success if they are imported.

Well, this is embarrassing! I just rechecked what happens when I dragged an afbrushes file into AD & the successful message does not go away until I press the OK button. It is not a "toast" message.

@carl123, can you tell what kind of brush file this Basic - 1.6.afbrushes one is?

OK, but what happens if an image the file contains is moved to a different location or deleted while the file is closed? How & when does the relative path to it get updated?

The point here is that a great many users do seem quite able to get used to how these tablets work, some within a short time of trying them out, & end up quite happy with what they offer, particularly on a cost vs. benefit ratio. If you could not get used to it that's understandable, but it does not mean that everybody else won't too.

It also does on my Mac running 10.15.7 Catalina.

Relative to what exactly? What if not all the items are always in an accessible file path? @GarryP raised this issue in several of the earlier posts.