Deleted v1 apps and Designer/Photo Documents folders disappeared

[stevekennedyuk]

I had a fair bit of content in the folders, they aren't showing in Time Machine (as they had the Affinity Designer/Photo logos on them, I'm assuming they were linked or something to somewhere and helpfully I can restore

[walt.farrell]

You've posted in the wrong part of the forums, Steve. A Moderator will move this for you, but please clarify whether you're talking about macOS or iPad? (I suspect it's macOS as you mentioned Time Machine).

[loukash]

Were they saved in your iCloud?
If so, they might be in the Recently Deleted folder (as also available in browser via icloud.com/iclouddrive)
But since I never use iCloud for the Documents folder on Mac, I have no explanations why they should disappear.

[stevekennedyuk]

Apologies, it's Affinity Designer/Phot on macOS, folder was in ~/Documents and not on iCloud. Seems to have been deleted when I deleted the Affinity 1 apps.

[debraspicher]

If the files are truly "gone" and it's urgent to grab those files and your machine hasn't had a lot of write activity on that drive, it's possible to "undelete" on Windows using an app. I'm sure there's apps for Mac. Since all delete does is essentially "turn off" those sectors, the data is still there. The undelete app will flip it back on, but of course, with the caveat that nothing was written over since it had been done.

[stevekennedyuk]

macOS doesn't work like that

[loukash]

30 minutes ago, stevekennedyuk said:

on macOS

Version?

[stevekennedyuk]

macOS doesn't work like that (and v 13.0.1)

[jmwellborn]

28 minutes ago, stevekennedyuk said:

macOS doesn't work like that (and v 13.0.1)

I am not on my Mac at the moment, so cannot test this, but could you try opening Time Machine, go back several days before you downloaded V2, and then see if you can use Spotlight?  If so, enter .afphoto and see if you get a screen with all of your photo files.  If so you should hopefully be able to restore them.  Then do the same by entering .afdesign.    If this works it won’t matter that the logos don’t show.   This may be impossible.  Hopefully it will work!

[stevekennedyuk]

tried that, doesn't appear

[R C-R]

How specifically did you delete the V1 apps? Did you drag the two apps to the trash or use some kind of 'cleaner' to do that.

I ask because just deleting the app itself by moving it to the trash should not touch anything in your Documents folder, assuming your file system is OK. It also should not touch anything in a Time Machine backup unless you open that app & manually delete items from it.

So something very weird seems to be happening with your Mac, but I have no idea what.

BTW, deleting items does not make them unrecoverable unless the file space they used has been overwritten with new data. This is because deleting an app just removes the file system entry for it & marks the space where its data actually is stored as unused.

[thomaso]

11 hours ago, stevekennedyuk said:

folders, they aren't showing in Time Machine (as they had the Affinity Designer/Photo logos on them, I'm assuming they were linked or something to somewhere

Does the orange marked mean you did not create the folders yourself (with custom folder icons)? Maybe by another app? Do you know if these were in fact folders or possibly Alias objects, linked to a different storage path on you disk or an external volume?

If the folders don't show up in Time Machine they might have been set as exclusions from the backup in System Preferences > Time Machine > Options. Though the info does not help to restore them it may help to understand what was / is going on and what might prevent the folders from appearing in your backups.

[stevekennedyuk]

I used Clean My Mac X to remove the programs, which removes them in /Applications and also all the stuff in ~/Library/Application Support/ etc. The folders were created when I installed the Affinity v1 apps (both ~/Documents/Affinity Designer/ and ~/Documents/Affinity Photo/ both with their associated program icon)

 

 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, stevekennedyuk said:

I used Clean My Mac X to remove the programs...

Personally, I have never trusted these 'cleaner' apps not to delete things they should not, but I do not know if that somehow contributed to your loss.

[thomaso]

7 hours ago, stevekennedyuk said:

The folders were created when I installed the Affinity v1 apps (both ~/Documents/Affinity Designer/ and ~/Documents/Affinity Photo/ both with their associated program icon)

Can you tell what app executed this "service"? – I doubt it is a feature of macOS 13, not only because this missing folders appear to be excluded from your Time Machine backups.

The (auto-)creation of these folders appears generally odd since it suggests (or even forces?) to organize your user documents sorted by applications – instead of project, topic, date etc. What happens if more than 1 app is involved in a project? Where did it save APhoto files which got edited + saved in ADesigner for instance, got they moved from the APhoto to the ADesigner folder?

I still would consider that these folders were virtually only while the files were possibly stored somewhere else. (similar to the partly confusing "recently used" macOS Finder window)

7 hours ago, stevekennedyuk said:

I used Clean My Mac X to remove the programs, which removes them in /Applications and also all the stuff in ~/Library/Application Support/ etc.

It is strange if it also deletes any document created by the user with an app to remove. Did it at least display a list to check / uncheck the affected files?

Since Clean My Mac is known for possible issues / unexpected behaviour you might try instead AppCleaner. Different to CleanMyMac it does not affect any macOS files but is used only when an app + its related system files should get removed. It provides a list of files / folders with options to uncheck and exclude from being deleted.

Below it has two files unchecked already itself when creating this list. And note, here also files related to a different app (designer beta 1.10) are included in the list. So it is always useful to check what possibly may get deleted by such an app before confirming the Delete button. – Of cause, as alternative it is also possible to delete manually only but use such a list only to search & find possibly related files.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, stevekennedyuk said:

The folders were created when I installed the Affinity v1 apps (both ~/Documents/Affinity Designer/ and ~/Documents/Affinity Photo/ both with their associated program icon)

Like @thomaso mentioned, installing any of the Affinity apps will not automatically create any of those user document folders, so something else must have done that, nor will saving any Affinity documents force saving them into any of those folders.

So can you tell us anything more about their creation or what might have been stored in them?

[stevekennedyuk]

I installed Affinity many years ago (earlier version of MacOS X). I then recently installed Affinity 2 apps and then deleted the v1 apps (Designer/Photo/Publisher)

 

I'm guessing the stuff in ~/Documents was linked somewhere else (not on iCloud as iCloud isn't showing anything in Recently deleted)

[thomaso]

9 minutes ago, stevekennedyuk said:

I'm guessing the stuff in ~/Documents was linked somewhere else (not on iCloud as iCloud isn't showing anything in Recently deleted)

This might mean the missing Affinity documents are still available at their original path and just the folders with custom icons (as links only) were removed. I am still curious what app did initially create these folders, and how they were used.

On 12/3/2022 at 11:28 AM, stevekennedyuk said:

The folders were created when I installed the Affinity v1 apps

Or does this earlier info simply mean the folders were created … by yourself manually?

[loukash]

1 hour ago, stevekennedyuk said:

I installed Affinity many years ago (earlier version of MacOS X).

Saving a document to iCloud will create these folders.

Apparently at that time you may have had the Documents folder in iCloud Drive enabled. System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Options

[loukash]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

Saving a document to iCloud will create these folders.

And this is what happens when I want to delete the folder:

"You can't undo this action."

A propos Time Machine backups, you may want to inspect the ~/Library/Mobile Documents folder.

[stevekennedyuk]

This was in my Mac Documents folder, I'm pretty sure when installing Affinity (v1) Designer/Photo, the folders were created