Closing dead files

[thatmanwithacamera]

I have just bought my first iMac and am converting from Windows, a very steep learning curve for an old man! I was advised to get Affinity Photo and did as I was told, for a change. I had a play with Photo but the files I used seem to have "stuck", when I try to open Affinity now, left click nothing happens, right click a dialogue block appears with all the files I had "played" with. If I place the cursor on any of them left or right click, same result Affinity closes into the dock. How can I delete/remove these files. Yes and before you ask I am a dinosaur.

[R C-R]

I am also a dinosaur, just one who has the advantage of using Macs for more decades than I can remember anymore.  :unsure:

 

I'm not sure what you are asking about but if you mean what pops up when you click & hold on the Affinity icon in the Dock or right click on it, the files shown are the ones most recently opened in the app. A left click (without holding down the button) should either launch the app if it isn't already running or bring it to the front if it is, unhiding it if it was previously hidden.

 

What should happen if you select one of the files shown in the popup dialog is that file will open in Affinity & the app will be brought to the front, but from what I am seeing while running the latest versions of OS X & Affinity Photo is that sometimes works as expected, but if the app is already open sometimes it does nothing, just like you mentioned. I'm still trying to work out why that is.

 

Anyway, I think which file names shown in the Dock popup are determined by the OS & there isn't anything you can do to clear them (short of doing some editing on some files normally maintained by the OS & shouldn't be touched unless you know exactly what they do). Best just to ignore them -- they eventually should go away or change as the OS gets around to doing that.

[MEB]

Hello thatmanwithacamera,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

Clicking on those files when you right-click the app's icon in the dock (recent files opened in the app) should open the application, bring it to the front with the file ready to be edited.

 

To clean those files from the app's icon on the dock (and also from File ▸ Open Recent menu), go to menu File ▸ Open Recent ▸ Clear Menu (in Affinity Photo or Designer).

If you want to disable Recent Files permanently for all apps, you can do so in OS X System Preferences, General tab, changing the Recent Items dropdown to None.

[R C-R]

Clicking on those files when you right-click the app's icon in the dock (recent files opened in the app) should open the application, bring it to the front with the file ready to be edited.

 

As I mentioned, this doesn't always work, & it seems to happen when the files in the Dock list do not match those shown in the app's recent items menu list -- typically the Dock list shows the same number of recent items as is set in System Preferences > General, but the app's recent items fly-out list sometimes shows fewer, omitting the oldest ones.

 

The app's Clear Menu item does remove all files from both lists, but this suggests to me that the app isn't always using the global System Preferences setting or updating its own list properly.