Help search bar disappearing (+ workaround)

[prod.astri]

I keep having this issue in Affinity Publisher where the searchbar under "Help" disappears randomly (as in, does not show up).
This bug persists from v1 to v2 on mac. 

A temporary workaround, if you own Designer too, is to switch to the Designer persona then back to Publisher, and it always reappears for me. I'm not sure if that works with Photo as well.

[MikeTO]

There have been other reports that the help search feature is unavailable when starting an Affinity app for the first time after installing, but those customers have found that restarting resolves the issue. I haven't seen reports of the problem returning.

I tried switching personas through the toolbar and menu several times but couldn't get my search option to disappear. It would be interesting to see a screen recording of the problem appearing and disappearing repeatedly as you change personas, or is this problem intermittent and happens when you're not expecting it?

BTW, it's much easier to access help through your browser because the help window isn't stuck on top of Affinity. Just go to http://affinity.help.

Cheers

[prod.astri]

It happens randomly, not when I change persona (which I rarely do when I'm in Publisher).

Also, I don't actually use it to search for help but rather to more quickly access commands from the menu bar. That's why I go to it very often, and probably why most people who don't use it this way will probably hardly spot this...but I use it all the time!

Edited December 11, 2022 by prod.astri
typo

[prod.astri]

I got it on camera! Hope this helps.

[MikeTO]

Thanks for this. One more question that Serif may want the answer to - the Help search option disappeared from Publisher when you switched to the Designer persona. Is it only disappearing with the Designer persona or does it sometimes disappear in the Publisher persona in Publisher?

[prod.astri]

its the opposite: while working in Publisher I randomly get this bug, and need to switch for a moment to designer (as in video) to make the search bar reappear. When I recorded the video I hadn’t switched to any other Persona until when I did to make the bug go away.

[Pauls]

Would be interesting to note what happened prior to the search bar disappearing. Certain operation in UI maybe a panel or screen open perhaps

[MikeTO]

On 1/11/2023 at 9:42 AM, Pauls said:

Would be interesting to note what happened prior to the search bar disappearing. Certain operation in UI maybe a panel or screen open perhaps

@Pauls The help search field disappeared for me today in Publisher 2.1 beta 1806. I don't know what the trigger was because I'd had the app open a long time in the background, and after restarting I couldn't duplicate it.

I googled the issue and found reports of it with ID, too. Some users seem to encounter this more frequently and one shared a solution which was to use System Settings > General > Language & Region and then to explicitly specify the language for the app rather than relying on the system default language. I can't replicate the problem so I don't know if this actually does anything but maybe it's a clue. But in any case, it sounds like this isn't a bug with Affinity and can be chalked up to a macOS issue.