Must quit Affinity Photo on mac to re open?

[danidh]

Hi, I'm not sure whether this is a bug, intended behaviour or whatever. But it is something that bothers me. 

Whenever you close Affinity Photo on Mac by just using the red x button in the top left it stays active in your menu bar as does basically every mac app. But with most Mac apps whenever you click the icon it re opens in some way, many similar apps open a finder window to allow you to open a file within that app or something similar.

I've noticed that Affinity Photo doesn't respond to clicking the icon at all after it's been closed. Using right click on the icon allows you to open some files you recently opened, but opening or creating a new file is only possible after completely quitting Affinity photo, or by opening one of the recent files and moving on from there.

This feels like a pretty weird way to handle this behaviour, and I'd love to know the thought process behind it if it's intended behaviour. Or I'd love to see it fixed if it's a bug. (Though I'd actually like to see it "fixed" if it's intended behaviour as well because I don't like it)

Edited September 19, 2022 by danidh

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

It's definitely the intended way it works. When you have Affinity Photo active in the Dock, and click on it, you should see the Menu at the top of the screen (which you may have configured to be hidden by default) change to the menu for Photo. At that point you can use Cmd+N to create a new document, or Cmd+O to open an existing document (which will give you that Finder window you want) or you can use the File menu item to get those, and more options.

 

[danidh]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

It's definitely the intended way it works. When you have Affinity Photo active in the Dock, and click on it, you should see the Menu at the top of the screen (which you may have configured to be hidden by default) change to the menu for Photo. At that point you can use Cmd+N to create a new document, or Cmd+O to open an existing document (which will give you that Finder window you want) or you can use the File menu item to get those, and more options.

 

Ah I see thanks!

I did not notice that the menu bar changed to Affinity Photo, this pretty much fixes all problems I had regarding this. 

[R C-R]

@danidh, if you have any floating Studio panels (ones dragged out so they are detached from the main app window), & you close the main window, those panels will still be visible whenever the Affinity app is frontmost.

[MissC]

I just came over to post about the Dock icon behavior and saw this thread, so I'll piggyback here.

It would be great if clicking on the Dock icon would maximize any open windows (which I think was the behavior in Photo/Designer v1 and pretty much every other Mac program out there). It's a small thing but working counter to years of UI habit gets frustrating.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, MissC said:

It would be great if clicking on the Dock icon would maximize any open windows (which I think was the behavior in Photo/Designer v1 and pretty much every other Mac program out there).

I may have misunderstood what you mean by maximizing but on my Macs I have never had an app's window maximized to full screen size just by clicking on its icon in the Dock. For me, all that does is either launch the app if it is not already running, or make it frontmost if it is.

[MissC]

Interesting, R C-R. Right now I have Mail, Safari and Messages open. After minimizing, clicking on the Dock icon for each program pops up the active window for me. Not so for Affinity 2 programs. I wonder if there's a setting somewhere to tweak.

[Old Bruce]

Just now, MissC said:

Interesting, R C-R. Right now I have Mail, Safari and Messages open. After minimizing, clicking on the Dock icon for each program pops up the active window for me. Not so for Affinity 2 programs. I wonder if there's a setting somewhere to tweak.

The inability to create a new blank window has been noted.

I am assuming that the behaviour is from closing all documents and the now empty Consolidated window but having the application still running. Many applications (when they are not the frontmost application) will create a new blank window when the application's icon in the dock is clicked, but the Affinity trio just become the frontmost application with no new Consolidated Window.

[MikeTO]

4 minutes ago, MissC said:

Interesting, R C-R. Right now I have Mail, Safari and Messages open. After minimizing, clicking on the Dock icon for each program pops up the active window for me. Not so for Affinity 2 programs. I wonder if there's a setting somewhere to tweak.

This is a known bug in v2. For now you'll have to click the minimized window icon in the dock rather than the app icon.

Cheers

[MissC]

Thanks for the updates, and I'll look forward to a fix in the future.

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, MikeTO said:

This is a known bug in v2. For now you'll have to click the minimized window icon in the dock rather than the app icon.

For that to work, at least in Catalina, System Preferences > Dock > "Minimize windows into application icon" must not be enabled. If it is, the only way to get the document window back is to make the app frontmost by clicking on its app icon & then from the Window menu choosing it there. That also works even if the window has not been minimized into the app icon.

[R C-R]

35 minutes ago, MissC said:

Interesting, R C-R. Right now I have Mail, Safari and Messages open. After minimizing, clicking on the Dock icon for each program pops up the active window for me.

Sorry for my mistake. I now see that what you meant by "maximize" was not to maximize to full screen size, but instead just to make the document window visible & frontmost at whatever size it was before minimizing it.

[MissC]

That's right, R C-R, I just aim to make the minimized Affinity program visible and frontmost.

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, MissC said:

That's right, R C-R, I just aim to make the minimized Affinity program visible and frontmost.

Then until the bug gets fixed either of the two workarounds already mentioned above should do that. Are they working for you?

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Old Bruce said:

I am assuming that the behaviour is from closing all documents and the now empty Consolidated window but having the application still running.

1 hour ago, MikeTO said:

For now you'll have to click the minimized window icon in the dock rather than the app icon.

I wonder whether this Affinity behaviour is somehow related to a similar one in V1 (at least) where I would expect an automatic app reaction:

If I click an Affinity document in a macOS Finder window the file gets opened but the Affinity application does not get focused. Usually every document opened this way triggers an automatic jump to its application – just Affinity does not. (I can't tell if this desired auto-switch is missing only because I use several desktops / macOS "Spaces".)

[Old Bruce]

15 minutes ago, thomaso said:

If I click an Affinity document in a macOS Finder window the file gets opened but the Affinity application does not get focused.

I see this too. Could well be related.

There are a few inconsistencies with other applications I have that are kind of like this.

[R C-R]

11 minutes ago, thomaso said:

If I click an Affinity document in a macOS Finder window the file gets opened but the Affinity application does not get focused.

For me the Affinity does become the frontmost app (either in V1 or V2). If you are seeing something different & you have several "Spaces" set up, maybe check System Preferences > Mission Control & see how it is set to control which space an app window opens in.

You can also set which Space an app's window(s) will always open in, as mentioned in https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-in-multiple-spaces-mh14112/13.0/mac/13.0 (or the equivalent for whichever macOS version you are running).

[thomaso]

3 minutes ago, R C-R said:

maybe check System Preferences > Mission Control & see how it is set to control which space an app window opens in.

This is not the issue here. I have various apps assigned to a certain Space while none of them refuses to auto-jump to its space if it gets triggered by a Finder object.

[thomaso]

Since this thread is about the reaction on the three macOS traffic light buttons respectively the result of cmd-W in Affinity, possibly this known V1 behaviour might matter here, too:

Interestingly in the linked original thread the behaviour was initially judged as unknown whether it's "by design" and required some discussion to get "logged to be looked at".

[R C-R]

9 minutes ago, thomaso said:

This is not the issue here. I have various apps assigned to a certain Space while none of them refuses to auto-jump to its space if it gets triggered by a Finder object.

All I can tell you is all the Affinity apps get the focus if I open one of their documents from Finder. It does not matter on my Mac if I am using Spaces or not, so maybe this has something to do with the version of macOS that is being used? 

[thomaso]

31 minutes ago, R C-R said:

something to do with the version of macOS that is being used? 

It might influence the issue but is hardly the culprit, since @Old Bruce replied to "see this, too", with Affinity 2 in macOS 11.7.1 (according to the signature) … which is younger than yours (10.15.7) and mine (10.14.6). But he also mentions other apps with "kind of like this" effect.

Nevertheless, it's good to know that Affinity can behave in the expected way which might mean an improvement is possible.

[R C-R]

16 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Nevertheless, it's good to know that Affinity can behave in the expected way which might mean an improvement is possible.

I would be most interested in learning why it already works that way for me but not for others.

[thomaso]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

I would be most interested in learning why it already works that way for me but not for others.

Mystical: For another forums thread I was just opening a few .EPS files in several steps via right-click > "Open with APub". They made APub jump to front / show the right Space. While trying the same with .JPG does not work, respectively makes the APub menu bar appear but without interface, sticking in the other current Space.

I can reproduce this behaviour and switch between .eps and .jpg, it seems to be quite reliable, also if eps and jpg are in the same folder.

Most strange: native Affinity documents do not cause the desired switch but behave like jpg, opening the file in the background and showing the Affinity menu bar only. Whereas jpg and eps open with a double click with the Preview app, Affinity files get opened with Affinity, which means the default assigned app for opening the file types does not matter here.

[R C-R]

17 minutes ago, thomaso said:

While trying the same with .JPG does not work, respectively makes the APub menu bar appear but without interface, sticking in the other current Space.

How do you have the Affinity app set in the Dock as far as which Space it opens files in? IOW, if you click on the app's dock icon to show the popup Options menu, what do you see, "All Desktops" or "This Desktop" or None"?

[thomaso]

6 minutes ago, R C-R said:

what do you see, "All Desktops" or "This Desktop" or None"?

A third option: the number of the space "Schreibtisch 3" (means "Desktop 3"), while Firefox has "Schreibtisch 2" ticked if I read this info from another space. Accordingly, if I am in their spaces already they both display "Dieser Schreibtisch" (This…). This is quite likely not the way to search for a culprit, since my recent .EPS experience. Also, APhoto & Lightroom use the same macOS space, while Lightroom auto-switches, APhoto does not, even for the identical .JPG file.

Now I rather suspect an Affinity message forcing the switch: since .EPS files don't have colour profiles they show the Affinity warning message according to my preference … while all other and my usual file types include profile info and thus do not show this message. If I deselect this option and thus disable this message then also the auto-switch does not work for EPS. Unfortunately other Affinity messages or dialog windows (e.g. opening PDF) seem to not trigger the auto-switch, how come?