Affinity Designer 2 for macOS - (2.0.4)

[Patrick Connor]

We are pleased to announce an update for the macOS release of Affinity Designer 2, version 2.0.4

The changes in Affinity Designer 2 for macOS 2.0.4 (those made since the last release Affinity Designer 2 for macOS 2.0.3) are as follows:

Fixes & Improvements:  (since the last release 2.0.3)

• Fixed: "Register your licence" prompt appears on every run up when a Mac App Store user doesn't register the license on the Affinity Store.
• Some image resources are being replaced by others from the same document when copy/paste was used to insert them. [AFB-7053]
• App crash upon startup caused by a deleted "Recently Used" file on Catalina
• ‘Help’->’Visit Support Forums’ menu item goes to the forums again
• Fix for non-primary Persona menus having broken ‘Help’->’Tutorials’ links.
• Fix gradual slow down after changing tools many times.
• Fixed non-ASCII characters not being accepted in license usernames
• Fix New Document sometimes showing Letter* instead of A4
• Editing an embedded PDF does not create a History step, meaning changes are lost when closing as no save prompt is shown
• Assorted stability fixes
• Help & localisation improvements.
• Assorted other Licensing and Registration improvements

To get notified when any new releases are made please follow the latest releases thread by clicking here

UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (which is free for all V2 users)

The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in application menu, Affinity Designer > About).

If you’ve purchased from the Mac App Store — updates are done automatically next time you run your software after it is available in the Mac App Store. If this does not happen for you, open the Mac App Store app and go to the Updates page and then Store > Reload page or press CMD+R. This should hopefully force the update to show. Apple sometimes phase roll outs around the world which can mean it may take up to 72 hours for your update to be available.

If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store — each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer to download and install any available update, or in the application main menu there is an option Check for Updates. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Designer for macOS) can be downloaded from this link (that installer is NOT for Mac app store purchases, which update through the Mac App Store).

[Patrick Connor]

All Readers

This thread is solely for commenting on this announcement.

Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the V2 Bugs on macOS section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.

[JoeyP]

Nice! Do you have an ETA on when the Export Persona crash bug will be fixed?

[Patrick Connor]

21 minutes ago, JoeyP said:

Export Persona crash bug

this one or something else?

[JoeyP]

4 minutes ago, Patrick Connor said:

this one or something else?

The link you shared seems to be to a search results page, but the one I'm referring to is in Designer when exporting slices in the Export Persona. It crashes so often while doing so, and I've seen a dozen or more forums about the issue specifically. I'm on Mac OS, but I believe it's been talked about by users on windows too.

[Patrick Connor]

There has not been any progress on that, but reports like your are noted to try to help with priorities, thank you

[mliving]

Still no restore minimized application window from dock. Seems like a pretty basic Apple app requirement. No?

Might seem trivial but it really screws up productivity when you have to click and hold then select a minimized window. Seriously Affinity. Why?

[CUOFFICIAL]

Can you guys fix the issue with pinch zoom breaking on Affinity Designer 2 on mac? Almost every time I'm working on a project the pinch zoom (on trackpad) breaks and it really disrupts productivity.

Edited January 28, 2023 by CUOFFICIAL
Adding detail

[pasz]

EDIT: Complained about the export bug (crash when exporting multiple slices) not being mentioned in the release notes, but I tested it after installing the update and I'm happy to say that it seems that this bug is squashed in 2.0.4!!!! At least for me.

[norbinw]

It's not, it's still there. Use the app more, and it will hang. IT JUST HANG FOR ME.

Edit: And after one OK export, again..  Honestly, I don't know why bug reports even exist. Why this section of the forum exists. Nobody is reaching out to no one, to even try to narrow down the list of potential issues. IT'S REPORTED OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, and nothing! 

[DC9V]

Thanks for patching! Keep it up! 🙂

[CatDev]

On 1/27/2023 at 4:50 PM, mliving said:

Still no restore minimized application window from dock. Seems like a pretty basic Apple app requirement. No?

Might seem trivial but it really screws up productivity when you have to click and hold then select a minimized window. Seriously Affinity. Why?

I was hoping this update would fix the issue as well. Anytime I need to restore the Affinity app, I need to right click the icon in the dock and choose the window.

[sansnom]

On Mac Mini M1 (16gb - 512gb), huge lags with Stage Manager when switching from one application to another.

[MikeTO]

3 hours ago, sansnom said:

On Mac Mini M1 (16gb - 512gb), huge lags with Stage Manager when switching from one application to another.

Hi, Stage Manager is not supported with Affinity at this time:

 

[sansnom]

@MikeTO: “Hi, Stage Manager is not supported with Affinity at this time:”

Oops !... Really !... 😕

[walt.farrell]

9 hours ago, MikeTO said:

Hi, Stage Manager is not supported with Affinity at this time:

 

That's in the section of iPad questions, though, not macOS, if you look in the categorized "List of all V2 FAQs": 

So, to me, it's unclear if it applies to macOS. Probably the article itself should be updated (title, content) so it is clear. And if it does apply to both, the categorized list should be updated, too  

[Dan C]

50 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

So, to me, it's unclear if it applies to macOS. Probably the article itself should be updated (title, content) so it is clear. And if it does apply to both, the categorized list should be updated, too  

Apologies, when I categorised the article I was only aware of Stage Managers presence on iOS - but I can confirm that this applies to both iPad and macOS versions of Affinity, in that we don't officially support Stage Manager at this time.

Our team are aware of issues when using Affinity and Stage Manager (on both platforms) and we're working to resolve these in a future update

Edit - This post is now in the 'General' section of the FAQ and I have updated the contents to be more specific.

[sansnom]

34 minutes ago, Dan C said:

“Our team are aware of issues when using Affinity and Stage Manager (on both platforms) and we're working to resolve these in a future update ”

Can you also ask your team to maximize the macOS Finder Quicklook preview window!... 😉

[Dan C]

6 minutes ago, sansnom said:

Can you also ask your team to maximize the macOS Finder Quicklook preview window!... 😉

As I understand it, macOS Finder Quicklook will use the Thumbnail file size when previewing an Affinity document - as macOS/Finder is unable to read Affinity documents, we save a thumbnail with the document for both the file icon and for when using Quicklook preview.

In order to not significantly increase the size of the Affinity document, this thumbnail is created at around 1024px x 700px in size - meaning this is the size of the Quicklook preview window that opens.

An option could be to add a preference in the app to save a larger thumbnail with the document for better previewing purposes on macOS (with a caveat of larger file sizes) and I will be sure to request this with our team, however this would be a feature request and not a bug

[sansnom]

9 minutes ago, Dan C said:

An option could be to add a preference in the app to save a larger thumbnail with the document for better previewing purposes on macOS (with a caveat of larger file sizes) and I will be sure to request this with our team, however this would be a feature request and not a bug

An option found in other graphics software, yes, this would bring real convenience to users, especially on large screens. Come on, a little effort!... Thank you to the whole team... 🙂

[deepblue]

Also, can you ask your team to maximize the macOS Finder Quicklook preview window!

The preview option (preview window) for all files (Designer, Photo and Publisher) is really not that great.
Too small and pixelated. Especially when you're looking for a file, you'll notice again and again that Affinity's preview isn't that great.

[Dan C]

On 2/1/2023 at 6:30 PM, deepblue said:

Also, can you ask your team to maximize the macOS Finder Quicklook preview window!

Please see my post above, as sansnom has requested this and I've explained the current behaviour, based on the thumbnail size the Affinity document generates.

I'll be sure to add your vote to the feature request described in the above post

[pasz]

On 1/30/2023 at 2:32 PM, norbinw said:

It's not, it's still there. Use the app more, and it will hang. IT JUST HANG FOR ME.

Edit: And after one OK export, again..  Honestly, I don't know why bug reports even exist. Why this section of the forum exists. Nobody is reaching out to no one, to even try to narrow down the list of potential issues. IT'S REPORTED OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again, and nothing! 

Yes I cheered too early, just tried exporting a few slices and it froze. Strangly this didn't happen when exporting from another document.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "Export Persona hang in Open and Save Panel Process when Exporting Slices" (REF: AFD-5921) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1781".
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.

[sansnom]

17 hours ago, Serif Info Bot said:

The issue "Export Persona hang in Open and Save Panel Process when Exporting Slices" (REF: AFD-5921) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.1.0.1781".
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.

 Perfect!... 🙂