Designer, key combo for duplicate

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, Furry said:

I followed your instructions step by step and eventiually got to the screen showing that I wanted it to search Library for the file extension .affshortcuts. I hit return and all i got was this:

Are you sure you started by first in Finder typing Shift + Command + G & then in the Go To dialog typing ~/Library in it & hitting return so that you will be searching in your user account's home folder, not the top level one? Also, in your screenshot Search: shows "This Mac" selected, not "Library,: like @Old Bruce said to choose.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, Palatino said:

The search did not bring anything for me either.

Were you searching in your user account's home folder (path ~/Library) or the top level Library folder?

[Palatino]

~/Library – Wrong?

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, Palatino said:

~/Library – Wrong?

I don't know what you meant by that. Were you searching in the Library folder in your user account's home folder or in the top level Library folder, the one with the System, Applications, & Users folders in it?

[Old Bruce]

Apple has made the decision that we should not willy nilly have access to the User's Library folder. For good or bad reasons. It is what it is. That is why I use the shortcut to the User's directory ~ If you type Shift + Command + G you will be presented with the Go to... dialog

now type ~/Library

Click on Library (not the default This Mac) then do the search for file extension is .affshortcuts

If they are not there then you may have installed the application in the wrong place.

this is what my Applications folder looks like, yours should be similar.

 

[tudor]

43 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

If you type Shift + Command + G you will be presented with the Go to... dialog

Easier than that: in Finder, keeping Alt pressed, click on the Go menu. You'll see Library in the list.

[R C-R]

40 minutes ago, tudor said:

Easier than that: in Finder, keeping Alt pressed, click on the Go menu. You'll see Library in the list.

I am not sure if this works in later macOS versions but in Catalina (& most earlier versions?) this article explains how to set Finder to always display the user's Library folder.

Also, after first setting this on an older macOS version, I see these keyboard shortcuts in the Finder Go menu, but I am not sure what I might have had to do to get that shortcut for the user Library folder.

All that aside, I definitely see multiple files with the .affshortcuts extension in my user account's Library folder, one for each Affinity app I have installed on my Mac.

[Old Bruce]

33 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I am not sure what I might have had to do to get that shortcut for the user Library folder.

That is both of us. After an OS reinstall it takes me a week or so to find the setting. I think it is in the Finder under View > Show View Options when you have your User home folder open, there is a check box for Show Library or some such.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

That is both of us. After an OS reinstall it takes me a week or so to find the setting. I think it is in the Finder under View > Show View Options when you have your User home folder open, there is a check box for Show Library or some such.

Yes, that is exactly where the "Show Library Folder" checkbox is, but what I was talking about is the keyboard shortcut for it (Shift-Command-L) that appears in the Finder Go menu (like in my screenshot). When I search the web for a list of macOS keyboard shortcuts, I do not find Shift-Command-L listed in any of the hits I get, nor do I know of where I could have set that as a custom Finder shortcut or if I did that sometime in the past, maybe in an older macOS version....

[v_kyr]

For a MAS bought APh version ...

Quote

> cd /Users/yourusername/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/"Application Support"

... OR ...

> cd ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/"Application Support"

> ls *.affshortcuts
shortcuts.affshortcuts

> file shortcuts.affshortcuts
shortcuts.affshortcuts: Apple binary property list

... so *.affshortcuts files are Apple binary property list files!

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

... so *.affshortcuts files are Apple binary property list files!

Which is interesting, but it does not help explain why @Furry can't get the CMD-J duplicate keyboard shortcut to stick, or why the user Library folder seems to have no *.affshortcuts in it.

[walt.farrell]

I would expect that a .affshortcuts file is what you get when you export your Shortcuts from the Preferences, Shortcuts dialog. And it's what you would use to import a previously exported set of shortcuts.

I would also expect that the active shortcuts are in some other file, with some other file type.

On the other hand, I'm a Windows user, and maybe the Affinity implementation on Mac is even more different from the Windows implementation than I think it is.

[v_kyr]

17 minutes ago, R C-R said:

... or why the user Library folder seems to have no *.affshortcuts in it.

As @walt.farrell above alread said, as far as you don't alter any default associated keyb setting, there is no need to save any *.affshortcuts file, since the defaults are still valid and will be applied!

For ADe & Apub I too have nowhere .affshortcuts files, since I never altered their initial settings and always use their defaults!

[R C-R]

18 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

As @walt.farrell above alread said, as far as you don't alter any default associated keyb setting, there is no need to save any *.affshortcuts file, since the defaults are still valid and will be applied!

My saved keyboard shortcuts file are saved to wherever I choose to save them, but there is still a separate set of these files named "shortcuts.affshortcuts" stored by the app itself in the respective ~/Library folders for each of the apps, so for instance one at file path ~/Library/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/shortcuts.affshortcuts for AP bought from the MAS, one at path ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher/shortcuts.affshortcuts for AFPub bought from the Affinity Store, etc.

AFAIK, this is where whatever the current set of keyboard shortcuts used by the app (IOW, the current per user defaults) are stored, regardless of if a user saves them to or loads them from any other folder.

So are you sure your ~/Library folder has no *affshortcuts files anywhere in it?

[v_kyr]

55 minutes ago, R C-R said:

so for instance one at file path ~/Library/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/shortcuts.affshortcuts for AP bought from the MAS

Your shown path is wrong, remove the second "Library" entry from here: ~/Library/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/shortcuts.affshortcuts

It's as I already said for ADe & APub!

Here you are:

Quote

> cd ~/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/"Application Support"
> ls *.affshortcuts                                                                                                                                                  
ls: *.affshortcuts: No such file or directory

I too have only APub from the Serif Store:

Quote

> cd ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Publisher"
> ls *.affshortcuts                                                                                                                                                  
ls: *.affshortcuts: No such file or directory

So yes I'm pretty sure, otherwise wouldn't have told so!

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Your shown path is wrong

Yes it is. Sorry for not catching the error when I copied & pasted after already typing ~/Library/.

However, I definitely do have a shortcuts.affshortcuts file for APub at the file path ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher/shortcuts.affshortcuts, & I am 100% certain it is not something I put there manually. It's modified date also immediately changes if I change any shortcut in APub, so I am confident this is where the app stored the keyboard shortcuts currently used by the app. Also, when I run your Terminal commands I do get that shortcuts.affshortcuts file, not "No such file or directory."

I have no idea why you do not, unless the file path depends on the version of macOS being run on the Mac.

FWIW, after obscuring my user account info, this is the text of the result of those commands:

Quote

<redacted> cd ~/Library/"Application Support/Affinity Publisher"
<redacted> ls *.affshortcuts
shortcuts.affshortcuts

 

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, R C-R said:

However, I definitely do have a shortcuts.affshortcuts file for APub at the file path ~/Library/Application Support/Affinity Publisher/shortcuts.affshortcuts, & I am 100% certain it is not something I put there manually.

You've probably altered/edited some shortcut key in APub, thus you have that file there and I not, since I never changed any keyb shortcuts for it!

[R C-R]

Just now, v_kyr said:

You've probably altered/edited some shortcut key in APub, thus you have that file there and I not, since I never changed any keyb shortcuts for it!

That makes sense because from time to time I have in fact changed a few of the shortcuts, like for testing purposes.

[walt.farrell]

52 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

You've probably altered/edited some shortcut key in APub, thus you have that file there and I not, since I never changed any keyb shortcuts for it!

You could experiment by adding a shortcut to something that doesn't have one, then looking for the file.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You could experiment by adding a shortcut to something that doesn't have one, then looking for the file.

That almost certainly would work, but still none of this helps explain why setting/resetting the keyboard shortcut for duplicate to the Mac default CMD-J  isn't working for @Furry.

[Furry]

Wow! I went to bed and, while I slept, twenty-two replies! I'm not going to attempt to answer each one individually (and, in any case, some of them were not addressed to me but to others in the thread) but I will make a series of points:

1. I am using a 2019 27" 5k retina iMac running MacOS Mojave 10.14.6. Why am I running such an "old" System? Because my perpetual license Adobe apps would need to be updated to a subscription version to run on later systems and, since I am retired, my apps do not generate an income and I cannot afford to pay that subscription. I am working on getting more familiar with Affinity apps and now rarely need to open InDesign or Illustrator. But aff.photo still confuses and frustrates me and I still open Photoshop frequently. When I want to adjust an image quickly, why spend time searching for a solution in aff.photo when I know what it is in Photoshop?

2. I have made sure my Affinity apps are all in the Applications folder and not within any folders inside the Applications folder.

3. I re-started my Mac to make sure everything was given a clean start.

4. I went to the Library folder within my own home folder (held down Option and selected Library from the Go menu) and then followed again Old Bruce's suggested procedure. This time I did actually find one single aff.shortcuts file and, as you can see from the screenshot, it is to do with Designer. You can also see at the bottom of the screenshot window that I m indeed in my own Library folder. Now I am not sure what to do with that affshortcuts file. Do I delete it? Do I edit it in some way? (Oh, and I took the screenshot at 50% so that it not so huge.)

5. When I look at my Affinity Publisher app, it too has the key combination Option+Shift+Command+S for Duplicate, though I don't think I have ever actually used that command in Publisher and it certainly wasn't me who set that key combination. So far as I can see, there is no Duplicate command in Affinity Photo.

6. I have been using Macs since 1989 so know my way around the OS reasonably well (some posters seem to be under the impression that I am a newby to computers.) I have been using Affinity apps since 2019 and, whilst Photo still confuses and frustrates me, I am reasonably familiar with Designer and Publisher.

7. I am left with the problem that my Desinger app (and presumably my Publisher app) has a rogue key combination for Duplicate and nothing I have tried to date will chage that.

Frustrated is a good word.

[Furry]

I am just wondering . . .

When I open Designer Preferences, go to shortcuts, select the Edit Menu group, click on the cross within a circle next to "Duplicate" and then type into that space Command+J, is there a further step to confirm that change or do I simply hit "Close"?

If I just hit "Close" and then look at the Edit menu, nothing has changed.

[R C-R]

40 minutes ago, Furry said:

When I open Designer Preferences, go to shortcuts, select the Edit Menu group, click on the cross within a circle next to "Duplicate" and then type into that space Command+J, is there a further step to confirm that change or do I simply hit "Close"?

No, just make sure the field is highlighted, hold down the CMD key on the keyboard & type the lower case letter J into that field. It should then show as "⌘J" in that field. There is no need to or way to confirm it.

[Furry]

Right. So I am back where I started — wrong key combo and no way to change it.

My sighs are getting heavier.

[v_kyr]

8 hours ago, Furry said:

Now I am not sure what to do with that affshortcuts file. Do I delete it? Do I edit it in some way?

Rename it (to aff.shortcuts-backup or the like), so you can keep it as a backup file and in order to make sure it won't be taken into account the next time you start ADe. Then close and restart ADe in order to see if it makes any difference or not. - Since what you want to accomplish is, that ADe v.1.10.5 should fall back to it's initial defaults here, where Cmd-j is/should usually be predefined as a default key combo for that command.