Affinity Designer 2 - crash upon loading file / start

[Dee SE]

Hi, 

I upgraded to MacOS Ventura 13.0 yesterday. Using Affinity Designer (1) it started crashing for a certain file I'm working with. Today I purchased Designer 2, installed and the same problem occurs. Once it starts crashing it's impossible to open the app since it's trying to load (and restore) the file from last session.

I have an old computer with Designer v 1.10.4 and it can open and work with the file without any issues so there seems to be no issue with the file.

Hoping for swift support.

David

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Sorry you're having a problem. To get past the "trying to load a file when it starts", you should be able to press and hold the Ctrl key while you start the application. That will get you a "Clear User Defaults" dialog, and one of the choices (pre-selected, I think) is to not load anything while starting. Just leave that one checked, and uncheck the others, and press Clear. With luck, that will get the app running.

[Dee SE]

Thanks, I tried to uncheck everything and clear. After a few times it seems to start properly and I used the internal settings to uncheck that files should be restored (temporarily).

I'll get back if the problem occurs again.

[Dee SE]

Ok, so it keeps crashing. I'm able to make a few changes (and instantly hitting Cmd+S).

It's a rollup so it's a quite big file but my computer is a Mac with M2 and 24Gb Ram so it shouldn't be a problem. Again - it runs fine on my old Mac with old version of Designer.

It seems to be when I zoom in and out of areas, but not sure.

[Dee SE]

Update: After testing some more - making big zoom moves (especially zoom in) definitely seems to make the app crash

[stokerg]

Hi @Dee SE,

Could you attach your afdesign file that has these issues and i'll take a look at whats happening.

[Dee SE]

Sure, I'll attach it here. 

Also update 2: Zooming in and out on the mouse-pad with the fingers is the issue. If I use the zoom in the navigator I'm able to zoom without the app crashing.

health-banner-no-headset.afdesign

[MikeTO]

5 minutes ago, Dee SE said:

Sure, I'll attach it here. 

Also update 2: Zooming in and out on the mouse-pad with the fingers is the issue. If I use the zoom in the navigator I'm able to zoom without the app crashing.

health-banner-no-headset.afdesign 146.97 MB · 0 downloads

I've seen it crash when changing the magnification with my trackpad, too, but only when I first open a document. If it doesn't crash the first time I change the magnification it seems solid from then on. So note to self, zoom in when I first open a document before making any edits.

[stokerg]

27 minutes ago, Dee SE said:

Also update 2: Zooming in and out on the mouse-pad with the fingers is the issue. If I use the zoom in the navigator I'm able to zoom without the app crashing.

 

I've been able to zoom in and out using my Magic Mouse gesture without issue.  I'll get the file loaded onto my MacBook and see if i get different results using the trackpad and will report back.

[Dee SE]

3 hours ago, MikeTO said:

I've seen it crash when changing the magnification with my trackpad, too, but only when I first open a document. If it doesn't crash the first time I change the magnification it seems solid from then on. So note to self, zoom in when I first open a document before making any edits.

Thank you. I'm using Macbook Air 2022, Chipset M2, 24 Gb Ram. It seems like a proper issue. Crashed like 50 times today. Using the built in mouse trackpad.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Dee SE

[MikeTO]

On 11/9/2022 at 10:29 AM, stokerg said:

I've been able to zoom in and out using my Magic Mouse gesture without issue.  I'll get the file loaded onto my MacBook and see if i get different results using the trackpad and will report back.

Just a bump since pinch to zoom is still crashing in beta 2.0.3. I did a lot of tests on this and I'm fairly sure it will only crash with pinch to zoom on the trackpad and not with any other zoom mechanism. And if it doesn't crash the first time you pinch to zoom after opening the document, it won't crash from that point on.

Pinching to zoom doesn't have to be the first thing you do when opening a document, you could edit it for a while and then when you pinch to zoom it will crash. So I've taken to zooming in as soon as I open a document to ensure it's 'safe' to being work on the document.

Thanks

[NathanC]

Hi all,

Many thanks for the additional details, I've been able to replicate this issue on an M1 Macbook and it has now been logged with the developers. 🙂

 

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Zooming in/out on a document with Live Perspective can intermittently cause a crash on (M1/M2) MacBooks" (REF: AFD-6345) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1790".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.

[Wu Yu Sen]

Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 on macbook pro 16 2019 have same problem.

[MikeTO]

12 minutes ago, Wu Yu Sen said:

Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 on macbook pro 16 2019 have same problem.

Is the issue with zooming with Live Perspective or with pinch to zoom?

The issue with Live Perspective was fixed in 2.1.0.1790 so it shouldn't happen now. The more general issue with pinch to zoom crashing on M1 and later Macs has not been fixed but you can avoid it entirely by disabling Metal. Choose Affinity Publisher > Settings, click Performance, and deselect Hardware Acceleration > Enable Metal. Then change Display from Metal to OpenGL. Close Settings and it will prompt you to restart Publisher for the changes to take effect. Publisher will be slightly slower after the change but it's very minor and you will avoid this and a few other random crashes in the future.

Good luck.