Jed

I sent an email to affinity@serif.com and heard back from them very quickly. They helped me work through the issue - Gareth was really helpful. Again, as it was explained to me, this is an issue with Apple's sand-boxing. Given that Affinity knows of the issue, one could argue that they should warn users of the MAS limitations with respects to the number and/or location of activated fonts, and instead encourage prospective purchasers to buy their software direct from their website (maybe it's in their EULA - dunno). I'll leave it to those who want to pursue that angle to see what comes of it. Page 13 of Extensis's Best Practise Guide found here shares some more information on the issue of fonts and sand-boxing with respect to Microsoft Office 2016 and where fonts ought to be located: i.e. /Library/Fonts/ . This may well also apply to Affinity applications that are bought from the MAS. I was using FontExplorer X Pro (FEXP) and had all of my user added fonts managed in the root folder of my User account, so that probably explains why I had so many issues. I ended up purchasing RightFont, and left my fonts in a sand-boxed approved location ( ~/Library/Fonts/) and haven't had an issue since. I think the solution here for me was that I had my fonts in the proper location, not that FEXP was the issue. I haven't gone back to FEXP to see if it works, and haven't had an issue since with RightFont. If you do learn more, please share with the rest of us.

As far as I understand it, this is not an Affinity generated issue or poor app development. The problem is that Mac App Store (MAS) apps are subjected to Apple's sandbox provisions. One artefact of sandboxing is that having a huge number of activated fonts causes conflicts, of which you are currently experiencing. There are two remedies to this: 1. Purchase the app directly from Affinity (not via the MAS) - the sandboxing restrictions/issues don’t apply. 2. Use font management software (FontExplorer Pro X, Suitase Fusion, RightFont etc) to deactivate all but your most-needed fonts, and keep this below ~1500. I went for the latter, and to be honest it’s not a big issue for me and my workflows. I’m not a full-on creative genius or anything, so I don’t pretend that this isn’t a big issue for you as your milage may differ.

Did you buy this from the Mac App Store (MAS) or directly from Affinity? As covered above, the MAS version has sandbox limitations arbitrarily set by Apple that does cause the issue you seem to have, however the non-MAS version has no such limitation. If you have the MAS version then there is a work around. I purchased and installed RightFont (~$32) and reduced my activated fonts right down to my oft-used and essential ~1200 and I had no further issues.

Thanks for the reply. I've got 3600 fonts activated at present, down from having all 8700 activated, and I'm still getting the error. I've cleared the font cache etc also - still no go. Are there other steps after deactivating fonts that I also need to do, e.g. clear font caches etc?

Thanks @Sean P. Can you give some guidance on how many fonts I should have activated then so as not to activate this feature (fault/limitation)? And is a better solution for you to convert my Mac App Store purchases into your store purchases so I can get around this?

Hi there. I too have the issue trying to save a document in my User folder. Here are my specs. Mac Pro 2009 (firmware upgraded to 5,1) - dual X5680 CPUs (12-core 3.33GHz) - 36 GB ram 1333 MHz - Sapphire Pulse RX 590 8GB - Boot drive is a Samsung 860 EVO SSD in a OWC Accelsior S SATA II PCIe card - User accounts are on a Fusion Drive made up of a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB paired with a Western Digital Black Caviar 2TB spinner. Affinity Designer (now at version 18.3) purchased off Mac App Store (MAS). Affinity Photo (now at 1.8.3) also purchased off MAS. And I purchased Affinity Publisher direct from your website (not at version 1.8.3). Can't save anywhere in my User (fusion drive) folder, or on my boot SSD. However, I can save in my User/iCloud/Affinity Designer folder. But that's not where I want to save my files! I have manually reset folder/file permissions, removed then installed all the Affinity apps, cleaned out user, application and system font caches and done a raft of other maintenance scripts using Onyx. NO OTHER applications have issues accessing/saving to my User account folders. Need help sorting this. Don't know when the issue began because I don't use this lovely software much, but when I do use it I spend days on projects and need it to work. I get the same result whether I use fonts in the document, and/or just vector graphics. I've read it could be too many fonts are activated - I deactivated all User fonts, cleared the caches, restarted and still get the issue. Affinity Publisher has no issues saving into User folder locations, however Affinity Photo has the same issue as Designer. The apps are all very slow to start up, and I see the fontd process is very busy as I wait for an app to start and open up. What is of concern is that while researching this issue, it can be traced back two years - yet the issue is still occurring for some users and I can find no solution for the problem after more than two hours searching. Please help - your software is awesome, but this sours the experience considerably for me.