Handoff?

[Richard S.]

Does Affinity Photo have the ability to use handoff?

I have bluetooth turned on, on both my iPad and Mac Mini, and they are both logged in to the same iCloud account and wifi network, but I have no idea how to start an image on my iPad, and then handoff to my Mac?

Any help appreciated.

[Dan C]

Hi @Richard S. 

Unfortunately this isn't supported in Affinity iOS apps currently, my apologies.

As confirmed below by Matt, one of our Developers, we tried using Handoff and although it worked, it was very slow due to Bluetooth limitations.

As it stands, HandOff still does not use WiFi (unlike Airdrop) and therefore we still consider it too slow to be used in Affinity apps.

I hope this clears things up!

[Guest]

On 11/3/2020 at 8:48 AM, Dan C said:

As it stands, HandOff still does not use WiFi (unlike Airdrop) and therefore we still consider it too slow to be used in Affinity apps.

Ooh, that's really disappointing as I use handoff all the time with Procreate, Linea, and Adobe Fresco (often with high dpi/resolution layers and files). Getting stuff in and out of the Affinity iPad apps is feeling more and more painful compared to other apps, and the whole "where exactly are my files (in iCloud or only on the iPad, and when), and what does 'close' actually mean thing" is really uncomfortable (and fragile feeling). At least Adobe has their default cloud storage so you at least know your files are stored there.

[DM1]

7 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

At least Adobe has their default cloud storage so you at least know your files are stored there.

Saving on Affinity apps is a little harder than it should be however you can set the default storage to be ICloud  in settings. That way you’ll know where your files are🙂

[Paul Mudditt]

16 hours ago, Bryan Rieger said:

Ooh, that's really disappointing as I use handoff all the time with Procreate, Linea, and Adobe Fresco (often with high dpi/resolution layers and files). Getting stuff in and out of the Affinity iPad apps is feeling more and more painful compared to other apps, and the whole "where exactly are my files (in iCloud or only on the iPad, and when), and what does 'close' actually mean thing" is really uncomfortable (and fragile feeling). At least Adobe has their default cloud storage so you at least know your files are stored there.

Affinity uses a different workflow to other apps, they use a non-destructive workflow with history and therefore the files are considerably larger as you work, to protect your time investment. I guess if they removed one of the major benefits of Affinity over other apps which is being non-destructive then smaller files sizes would likely allow handoff to be implemented. I have no problems switching between iPad, Mac and my PC versions over iCloud once you relate to "close" 

Close means the same on the iPad as it does on a PC or a Mac.

For example, you would not open a Microsoft Excel or Autocad Drawing document on a PC from a file server location then start working on another PC on the same document without first closing the file on the first PC.

The file server would actually prevent it by applying a file lock to remind you that you (or someone else) had the file open already. This file locking capability is not available via cloud services so can catch the unwary out.

So the rule is always, close any file before you attempt to open on any other system.

[Richard S.]

“the rule is always, close any file before you attempt to open on any other system.”

Unfortunately this completely negates the entire point of handoff.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Paul Mudditt said:

So the rule is always, close any file before you attempt to open on any other system.

In an era of Google Docs, Figma, Ulysses, various cloud services, etc. this (unwritten) ‘rule’ seems very quaint and anchored in the past.