Layout of Affinity Photo

[GK-Applemore]

Is it possible to setup the menu layout on Affinity so that every time it is opened, certain menus are already showing (i.e. layers, colour, etc.)?

Ideally if there is a way of setting this through Group Policy, a registry change that can be sent out, as we have this on over 150 machines.

[Dan C]

Hi GK-Applemore,

Welcome to the forums

Once you've set your Studio/Toolbars layout in Affinity there's no way of directly exporting this layout - however you can copy the App Data 'Workspaces' folder and deploy this to all your machines, so that each machine has the same layout when first opened.

The address for this folder is - 

%APPDATA%\Affinity\Photo\1.0\Workspaces

Please do note that these cannot be locked to prevent further editing, meaning that once each machine has this layout loaded, it can be changed individually and this will be 'remembered' upon closing the app.

[thomaso]

10 hours ago, Dan C said:

you can copy the App Data 'Workspaces' folder

Dan, could you please tell the according file path for macOS, too?
I assume it's in  ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/user   ... but which file?

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, thomaso said:

Dan, could you please tell the according file path for macOS, too?

I am not Dan, but based on looking at modification dates in Finder after changing the Studio panel (not menus) layout slightly & quitting the app, I am reasonably sure is it is a part of preferences.dat.

However, I have to wonder what else might be stored in that file & what would happen if it was copied to a Mac with a different screen size. It seems reasonable to assume the screen coordinates & window sizes of the Studio panels are stored in the same file, so it might cause problems, like for floating panels that open completely off-screen on a smaller screen Mac than the one the file was copied from.

[Dan C]

On 2/1/2020 at 1:21 AM, thomaso said:

Dan, could you please tell the according file path for macOS, too?

Depending on the installation method, the location is as follows -

Mac App Store -  ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinity[app name]/Data/Library/Preferences/com.seriflabs.affinity[app name].plist

Affinity Store - ~/Library/Preferences/com.seriflabs.affinity[app name].plist

As R C-R has mentioned, this file contains the location and sizes of the app and studio windows, so if you move this file to another Mac that has less screen size, resolution or connected monitors you may find this doesn't appear as expected.

I hope this helps