Problem switching between iPad and iMac

[chile9]

I'm having an issue going back and forth between my iPad and my iMac with files saved on iCloud. I have a file that I created on Designer on the iPad. I saved it to my iCloud Drive and opened it with Designer on my iMac. I made my changes and saved the file (still on iCloud Drive) and tried to open it on the iPad by clicking on the file in the Files folder (the iOS file directory) but it will only open it in Affinity Photo. It will not open it in Designer unless I use "open from cloud" in the Designer new document interface. I realize that all Affinity apps use the .afdesign file type, but I'm not sure why the iPad seems to default to Affinity Photo. It opens properly on the Mac (Catalina) but I'd like it to do the same on the iPad. Is there a fix for this?

[Dan C]

Sorry to hear you're having trouble @chile9!

11 hours ago, chile9 said:

I realize that all Affinity apps use the .afdesign file type, but I'm not sure why the iPad seems to default to Affinity Photo. It opens properly on the Mac (Catalina) but I'd like it to do the same on the iPad. Is there a fix for this

Unfortunately this is an issue with iPad OS that we cannot overcome currently. For whatever reason, file formats and default applications on iOS are controlled by the first application that's installed that supports this file format.

For example, I imagine that Affinity Photo was installed on your iPad first, when this is done, your iPad is told that any .afdesign/photo/pub files should be opened in Affinity Photo.

Then, when installing Affinity Designer, it tries to change the default app for .afdesign (and any other more Designer orientated files), however iOS does not 'release control' of the file format for Designer, so Affinity Photo is essentially 'locked' as the default app for .afdesign files when opening them from Files.

We've seen this happen before across other creative apps, such as not being able to use .PSD files if Adobe Fresco had been installed - 

Unfortunately as I understand it this is a fundamental issue with iOS and we must wait for Apple to provide a fix. In the meantime, I believe if you uninstall Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer will become the default apps for your files, however when you've reinstalled Affinity Photo, you'll now find that opening .afphoto documents from Files will open them in Designer by default.

My apologies for any inconveniences here!