StudioLink doesn't work (macOS)

[peterkrisztianszabo]

On 6/25/2019 at 12:52 PM, Dan C said:

If anyone is still having issues with StudioLink, please follow the below instructions:

If you're unable to access StudioLink in Affinity Publisher, make sure you have installed the 1.7.1 updates (as described here) for both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. After you have installed the 1.7.1 updates you will also need to run the apps at least once before reopening Affinity Publisher to access the StudioLink feature. If StudioLink still doesn't work, please try the following:

If you're using Windows go to %ProgramData%\Affinity\Common\1.0\appinfo\Release and rename the Photo Release.appinfo and Designer Release.appinfo files. (as Photo Release OLD.appinfo and Designer Release OLD.appinfo respectively) Once renamed, re-run both Designer and Photo and try StudioLink again.
NOTE: If this works for you PLEASE can you upload those renamed files to us to investigate further.

If you're using macOS, make sure that all Affinity apps ( Publisher, Photo & Designer ) are in the root of the Applications folder.

 

Please create a new thread if you can't link the apps after trying the above, so we can investigate this further, many thanks!

 

I've found and deleted these files on mac an everything serif named and reinstalled the 1.8.4 version of all apps to the applications folder but publisher still doesn't see them. Can you guys help me out here?

[Dan C]

Hi @peterkrisztianszabo,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble! The latest version of the Affinity apps is version 1.9.1 - could you please confirm for me, are you able to update to this version?
We always recommend using the latest version of the Affinity apps where possible.

Did you purchase the apps from the Mac App Store, or the Affinity Store?

Since reinstalling, have you launched each application, before attempting to use StudioLink?

When trying to use StudioLink in Publisher, what error message do you see please?

Many thanks in advance

[peterkrisztianszabo]

App store still shows 1.9.0 for me.

All apps are from MAS. The backups are the .pkg files the App Store downloads. I copy them before it deletes them. I'm on yosemite 10.10.5 and can't go higher on this machine becauso of a nikon app that only works on this version but tied to a work-camera. 1.9 had some nasty ui bugs if switched to light version so I wanted to go back to 1.8.4.

AP and AD apps were launched before Publisher. All apps are in the root of the applications folder.

It says "app launch required".

I would like to find a solution where I'm not tied to redownloading from the app store as that defeats the purpose of backing up installers.

 

 

 

[Dan C]

Just now, peterkrisztianszabo said:

App store still shows 1.9.0 for me. (...) 1.9 had some nasty ui bugs if switched to light version so I wanted to go back to 1.8.4.

Thanks for letting me know, the 1.9.1 version has only been released this morning, so it may take a short while to show within the MAS in your locale.

9 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

AP and AD apps were launched before Publisher. All apps are in the root of the applications folder.

It says "app launch required".

This would indicate that Publisher is not correctly detecting the other installed Affinity apps, however this may be due to the manual removal of a required file, as below;

41 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

I've found and deleted these files on mac an everything serif named

Do you recall which files you removed from your mac? Our suggested steps only recommend this for Windows, so without knowing which files you have manually deleted, it may be difficult for me to locate the cause of this on your Mac.

For this reason, we'd recommend installing the latest update when this shows in your MAS, as hopefully installing the latest updates will replace any required missing files and should allow StudioLink to function correctly.

[peterkrisztianszabo]

I'll look up what were the folders I removed but to be fair I only did this after I noticed that the function is broken. All I ever trashed before was the .app files from the application folder.

The MAS is installed them from these exact files so how come it doesn't work if I manually reinstall them?

Found them!

 

Edited February 25, 2021 by peterkrisztianszabo

[Dan C]

44 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

The MAS is installed them from these exact files so how come it doesn't work if I manually reinstall them?

Without knowing the exact reason for StudioLink not working on your mac currently I can't be 100% certain of this - however there is a possibility that different functions are called by macOS when installing through the MAS that might not be called when installing from .pkg files. Manually installing and rolling back your app version on the MAS isn't something we test internally,  we always install the latest versions through the MAS directly for testing so I cannot be sure if this changes the installation process in the 'background' of macOS.

47 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

Found them!

Thanks for your screenshots, these folders are required by Affinity and their contents may not be being generated correctly using your install method, so I would recommend restoring these to their default location, if they're still available in your Trash.

Could you please upload a copy of these .appinfo files shown in your screenshot here for me?

Thanks in advance once again

[peterkrisztianszabo]

As I said before the studiolink function stopped working ! before ! I removed these. The apps regenerate them on launch, these are not from MAS but a later .pkg based install. I may have unmodified files on my other mac that's not with me right not. Do you still want them?

 

 

[Dan C]

Thanks for the info - yes please, I'd like the versions of these files that are currently being used on this Mac, that the app has recently generated, as I'm hoping they'll contain more information as to why this is not working for you 

[peterkrisztianszabo]

Here, you go! (Sorry for the delay, had to leave early yesterday for covid testing...still negativ...yay!)

 

com.seriflabs.affinityphoto.appinfo

com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner.appinfo

com.seriflabs.affinitypublisher.appinfo

[Dan C]

Many thanks for these files and no problem at all - I certainly understand and I'm glad to hear this!

Our best recommendation currently is to update to the latest version using the Mac App Store, as we suspect that installing this update will 'repair' the necessary files that have currently stopped working for StudioLink.

If this doesn't help, or you are unwilling to update through the MAS then we will need to do an in-depth search through your Console, after enabling some debugging steps in Terminal. If you are not familiar with either of these, then this process can get a little 'tricky' and therefore we really do recommend updating through the MAS as the first step - as it's considerably easier than any following steps.

Please do let me know if this helps, otherwise we can continue to try and find the root cause of this issue

[peterkrisztianszabo]

Sorry, had a busy day. Will get back to you once I tried the 1.9.1 builds. There is still no good answer to why is this function also dead on my other mac where I never removed the files.

I'm fine with the terminal, as long as you tell me what to type in. I use the console to figure out running times and whatnot.

 

[Dan C]

Not to worry, I certainly understand and please do keep us updated!

On 2/26/2021 at 7:14 PM, peterkrisztianszabo said:

There is still no good answer to why is this function also dead on my other mac where I never removed the files.

My apologies, I was not aware of this - are you stating that 2 different Macs were both working with Studio Link, and then without changing anything on either Mac, Studio Link stopped working?

This certainly isn't something I've ever heard of being reported before, Studio Link can sometimes break when updating the apps, but I cannot understand how this stopped for seemingly no reason on 2 Macs at the same time without something linking them.

Do both of the Macs share an Apple ID? Do they also use the same iCloud account? Do you sync/backup any of your files between these two Macs?

Have you recently installed any third party apps to your Mac? Are both Macs running Yosemite 10.10.5 & Affinity 1.8.4 - or does this differ per machine?

Many thanks once again for your continued patience here

[peterkrisztianszabo]

I'll try to be short:

Macbook pro, mac mini, both on 10.10.5 same apps on both, nothing updated other than waterfox classic, the browser. No sync or shared backup, no icloud.

I bought all apps from MAS and quickly realized that I need a better affinity backup solution then time machine. I just wanted to save the installers, so I started to grab the .pkg files that the MAS downloads but deletes later. If I prefer to I can roll back a version. Or at least I could have for a while. Turns out studiolink is broken if the app is installed from the saved .pkg file. In this case the MAS doesn't even see the installed apps on the purcahsed tab.

No matter which version I install from .pkg, it's broken, even if I haven't removed any other file than the actual app from the applications folder. 1.9.1 is ok installed from the MAS but if the app is deleted and reinstalled from the freshly saved .pkg: it's broken.

So there is nothing shared between the two machines just same thing happens: A new version comes out, I delete the old apps from applications but normally nothing else (this is needed to get a full installer and not a delta) and download and saved the new .pkg. Till now the problem didn't show because I never needed to roll back. 1.9 greeted me with a fell apart black and white new doc panel...this started the roll back craze. Btw the apps start for me with the same speed on all versions I tried during this investigation (1.7.3, 1.8.4 and the current ones), do I don't have the slow start problem.

I would save a time machine image with a working studio link but at this point the "new file" ui panel is still broken if the light theme is selected. Maybe with 1.9.2 it gets fixed. See pic!

I would be happier with 1.8.4, as it seems 1.9 is not really being tested to work with yosemite anymore. Any ideas from devs how to link the apps manually? How does the affinity store version solve this? Too bad the only option was MAS when I bought the firs two apps.

 

 

[Old Bruce]

5 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

I would save a time machine image with a working studio link but at this point the "new file" ui panel is still broken if the light theme is selected. Maybe with 1.9.2 it gets fixed. See pic!

 

Click that blank spot anyway.

[Dan C]

1 hour ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

No matter which version I install from .pkg, it's broken, even if I haven't removed any other file than the actual app from the applications folder. 1.9.1 is ok installed from the MAS but if the app is deleted and reinstalled from the freshly saved .pkg: it's broken.

Thank you for all the information and for confirming this for me - I had suspected this may had been the cause but unfortunately I had no .pkg files to test here.

I have spoken with our QA team and they have confirmed that this unfortunately isn't an officially supported method of installing the app and therefore it is not tested internally. We also suspect that installing the apps in this manner will not create the necessary 'link' between the installers, as they're likely not able to access the correct folder locations when being installed outside of the MAS 'Sandboxing'.

I certainly understand and respect your choice to use the older versions of the apps if you wish, however we cannot guarantee that all functions of the app will work correctly when installed in this manner - such as StudioLink - my sincerest apologies.

1 hour ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

Any ideas from devs how to link the apps manually? How does the affinity store version solve this?

As above, we do not believe we can link apps installed from .pkg files from outside the MAS as the app will always be checking in a location that it likely doesn't have access to, due to Sandboxing. Unfortunately we cannot work around this Sandboxing on macOS with MAS apps.

When installing the .DMG version from the Affinity Store, the StudioLink files are written in a different location which can be accessed from outside the MAS installer/sandboxing. As far as I'm aware, these methods are not 'interchangeable' and there is no way to force the .pkg MAS version of the app to look in the other folder, and vice-versa.

I hope this clears things up and my apologies for any inconveniences caused here.

[peterkrisztianszabo]

I'm speechless, as an early adopter I bought the first two when they were only available at the MAS and now I had to fight  half a day testing out variations only to find out that there is no way to do this other than ! maybe ! with time machine. And I'm not even sure about that as replacing the 1.9.1 MAS version with it's saved version failed as well. So it fails even if there was no rolling back. Maybe if I restore a single time machine backup with disk utility. Would that work?

I certainly see this as defect of the method chosen by the devs. Instead of the buy button there should be "link designer/photo" option. Why is Publisher asking the app store instead of looking around or giving a user an option to point to the apps like with plugins? Restoring an entire system to roll back one app is a total overkill if it even works.

I would also like to know why is 10.9 and 10.10 is still supported if testing doesn't go to the lengths of pressing command+N? As "Old Bruce" suggested I could just click the white text on white button version but I'm more concerned about what else could be broken if this is still like this after the release log of 1.9.1 stated that it was fixed.

Of course this would be an easy fix if I had an affinity version which was not available when I bought the first two. And looking around here there is no way to switch.

I'm sorry but this leaves me with a sour taste.

 

[loukash]

3 hours ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

with time machine

I've been restoring MAS Photo & Designer 1.8.4 from a Time Machine backup before and that worked fine. Simply by navigating to the Applications folder backup and copying the apps from there. Especially while the Mac App Store appears to be severly broken for many folks since a few months at various stages on varying MacOS versions, particularly on Mojave, for the past few weeks also on El Capitan, and the last time I checked more or less dead on Mountain Lion. (For what it's worth, v1.8.4 from MAS should still work on Mountain Lion, but the Affinity experience on Mountain Lion never really was, er, overwhelming. Eventually I had to move on to El Capitan in 2019. I've never used Yosemite though.)

That said, my Publisher is the Serif Store version which may make a difference. The Studio Link works just fine, even though I'm

doing "nasty things" like moving the Affinity apps to a different partition and linking them to the currently active MacOS Applications folder via symbolic links in order to avoid multiple instances of the same app and save quite a few gigabytes of precious storage space…

On 2/25/2021 at 1:16 PM, peterkrisztianszabo said:

The backups are the .pkg files the App Store downloads. I copy them before it deletes them.

While that essentially seems like a Good Idea™, and I've been also thinking of it myself given the Mac App Store pain in the ass in general, I am not really surprised that it doesn't work as expected. There appears to be more going on during an MAS installation than just double clicking a *.pkg archive.

3 hours ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

Restoring an entire system to roll back one app is a total overkill if it even works.

Definitely the very last resort.

Hint:

1. Get an external drive. If your Macs already have USB 3, make sure it's that one. If older models (e.g. my MBP 2008 only has USB 2 while my MBP 2012 has USB 3), better look out for a FireWire drive.
2. Partition the drive and install all variants of MacOS your Macs can run on each partition.
3. Boot from that drive using whichever MacOS you choose, log into MAS and install Affinity.
4. Check if Studio Link behaves correctly

In other words: troubleshooting.
Make sure to exclude anything that doesn't cause the issue until you can narrow down the culprit.
Sometimes, that could even be a random corrupt cache file in your ~/Library/Caches folder…
Been there done that, many times.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, loukash said:

There appears to be more going on during an MAS installation than just double clicking a *.pkg archive.

As I understand it (which is not that well) the actual installation is done at least in part by Installer.app (located in System/Library/Core Services) & it includes various tests to determine what files in the archive should be installed, where they should be installed, if they need to be patched or modified, etc.

[loukash]

4 hours ago, R C-R said:

the actual installation is done at least in part by Installer.app (located in System/Library/Core Services) & it includes various tests to determine what files in the archive should be installed, where they should be installed, if they need to be patched or modified, etc.

If you double click a *.pkg, yes.

But a MAS installation doesn't launch the Installer.app, it uses a bunch of some background processes & daemons instead (I haven't really inspected them yet but they are surely well documented elsewhere) which may likely execute a few other scripts'n'things that are not present in the actual *.pkg archive.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, loukash said:

If you double click a *.pkg, yes.

But a MAS installation doesn't launch the Installer.app, it uses a bunch of some background processes & daemons instead (I haven't really inspected them yet but they are surely well documented elsewhere) which may likely execute a few other scripts'n'things that are not present in the actual *.pkg archive.

Yeah, I think some of the processes are the same whether the installation is done by Installer.app or the MAS. I am also not sure the pkg files are all that a MAS installation uses/requires for a proper new installation or update. If nothing else, there needs to be some way to determine if the app is already installed, or if a partial or full download is required. The MASReceipt/Receipt file probably has to be updated & maybe compared to the CodeSignature/CodeResources file to make sure the download is legit. 

[peterkrisztianszabo]

Hi everyone!

-I only ever used to time machine to create a single image snapshot of my fresh/clean systems to restore with disk utility. This process is kind of a reset button. I rarely have to go to such lenghts: last time I used it the GPU of my mbp was replaced (yes, seriously) and before I handed over my mac I removed all my stuff via target disk mode and left a blank system for the time of the repair and restored my backup after I got the mac back. I never reached back to grab a deleted file with time machine. The MAS install does NOT create the files and folders I screen grabbed and posted earlier. I kept those folder open during the MAS install and nothing was created until I actually launched the app. I suspect that the affinity bundle only check with MAS if another app is installed or not meaning if the installation happened any other way (app grabbed from the "past", installed from .pkg) there will be no MAS ticket of it and Publisher will start nagging about the broken Studiolink instead of actually letting users point it to the other installed apps like we do with plugins.

-MAS always grabs the full installer if it can't find the app in Applications. Once I didn't delete them and it only grabbed a smaller delta update installer, which alone didn't install a thing as it only contained the diff between the installed and the new version (obviously).

On 3/1/2021 at 5:52 PM, Dan C said:

As above, we do not believe we can link apps installed from .pkg files from outside the MAS as the app will always be checking in a location that it likely doesn't have access to, due to Sandboxing. Unfortunately we cannot work around this Sandboxing on macOS with MAS apps.

If the above is truth, then how does an affinity store publisher link to MAS photo and designer or the other way around?

I tried to be cooperative here to solve this and I honestly don't think I caused this. I made my purchases at the time with the best intention: to support the development early but now I feel like I've been shot in the foot.

 

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

I tried to be cooperative here to solve this and  I honestly don't think I caused this.

I can see how you might feel that way but the fact remains that you were relying on a method to (re)install apps from the MAS that is not supported either by Apple or Serif, one that has caused unforeseen linking problems with no obvious workaround due to macOS sandboxing restrictions.

[loukash]

13 minutes ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

I tried to be cooperative here to solve this and  I honestly don't think I caused this.

No one blames you. On computer drives, weird things happen all the time beyond our control as users.
As I said, at the end of the day the culprit might even be something as trivial as a corrupt cache file in your user folder.

Which reminds me:
Have you tried usual troubleshooting procedures like creating a test user account and launching the Affinity suite from there?

[Dan C]

18 hours ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

On 3/1/2021 at 4:52 PM, Dan C said:

As above, we do not believe we can link apps installed from .pkg files from outside the MAS as the app will always be checking in a location that it likely doesn't have access to, due to Sandboxing. Unfortunately we cannot work around this Sandboxing on macOS with MAS apps.

If the above is truth, then how does an affinity store publisher link to MAS photo and designer or the other way around?

When installing Affinity Store versions of the apps, you aren't installing from .pkg files, these apps are installed using .dmg files, which is the difference causing the issue you're seeing.

.DMG installations are supported with StudioLink, but as mentioned installing from .pkg files is not supported by us - so unfortunately we cannot guarantee all of the Affinity application functions will work when installing using this method.

18 hours ago, peterkrisztianszabo said:

I tried to be cooperative here to solve this and I honestly don't think I caused this. I made my purchases at the time with the best intention: to support the development early but now I feel like I've been shot in the foot.

I'm certainly sorry to hear you feel this way regarding the Affinity apps, but as myself and other forums members have confirmed, this is not something that we can control and we certainly would not place blame on our customers. My apologies if any of my posts here have lead you to feel this way.

I have been provided a few debugging lines from our devs that can be ran within Terminal to activate logging within your mac Console - so that we can see where the app is currently trying to check and attempt to resolve this - however as above we cannot offer any guarantees for this.

I will PM you now with this information and I will continue to support this issue as I can from there. I hope this helps.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Dan C said:

which is the difference causing the issue you're seeing

As I understand it, the apps installed from the Serif store are not sandboxed, so they can see things the sandboxed versions from the app store cannot.