Macros/Assets/Brushes downloaded manually, then on "Account" section. Any fixes?

[AntC]

Hello all Affinity forum users!

I have come today (first time) having a slight issue. You see, I downloaded the assets that were given out to users who upgraded from Affinity 1 to Affinity 2, but I did so manually (old habits die hard).
Then, after realizing that Affinity 2 has an "Account" page, I decided to download the rest of the assets from there, since it is easier. In doing this, I also re-downloaded all of the previous assets I had downloaded before, because I thought that Affinity would recognize that they were the same, and prompt an either "replace or don't copy" prompt for these downloads. This did not happen, and it just downloaded them... again.
Now I have 2 sets of brushes, 2 sets of assets, and 2 sets of macros.

How would I go about removing these? I can see the ones that I have downloaded from the "Account" section have locks, and the ones manually have this sort of "chain-link" icon. Would I have to delete them all manually?

(Psst. It would be really cool if Affinity had (has?) a feature to where it knows if you have the assets/brushes already, and prompted you with a replace/duplicate/not do prompt, for idiots like me)

[v_kyr]

8 hours ago, AntC said:

How would I go about removing these? I can see the ones that I have downloaded from the "Account" section have locks, and the ones manually have this sort of "chain-link" icon. Would I have to delete them all manually?

Probably you would have to remove the removable dublettes manually step by step here. - Or reset all related things in the App and afterwards freshly install them from your account.

See under the application Preferences ...

Quote

Miscellaneous options

• Your current Fills, Brushes, Object Styles, Text Styles, User Defaults and Fonts can be reset to factory defaults. Reset fonts updates the font cache to the current state of the system (from memory).

... and ...

 

8 hours ago, AntC said:

(Psst. It would be really cool if Affinity had (has?) a feature to where it knows if you have the assets/brushes already, and prompted you with a replace/duplicate/not do prompt, for idiots like me)

Depends on if all of these would have some sort of internal unique ID in order to always be able to clearly identify (and compare) them in some foolprove manner. Since just by comparing file names etc. it won't be a clear way to do it, as you can freely rename files according to your needs.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Depends on if all of these would have some sort of internal unique ID in order to always be able to clearly identify (and compare) them in some foolprove manner. Since just by comparing file names etc. it won't be a clear way to do it, as you can freely rename files according to your needs.

You can also add your own brushes or Assets to a pack you've downloaded from the Store and installed, or edit the existing ones to change them. So it can't simply be an ID associated with the pack. It would also have to change if you made changes to the pack.

[v_kyr]

6 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

So it can't simply be an ID associated with the pack.

With "unique ID's" each item (brush, asset, whatever) on it's own is meant here, no matter if inside a pack, archive or whatever datastructure here. And as a pack is just nothing else like a datastructure which holds/contains such single items with their unique ID, it would then contents wise be iterable and finally item comparable by the single unique item IDs.

[DWright]

When you import a content pack multiple times into the Affinity apps the additional packs will have a number placed at the end of the pack name so you can identify that it is a duplicate of an already installed pack 

[AntC]

Thank you all for the suggestions! I've managed to remove the duplicates manually :)

[Gripsholm Lion]

On 5/3/2023 at 12:44 AM, AntC said:

I can see the ones that I have downloaded from the "Account" section have locks, and the ones manually have this sort of "chain-link" icon.

I thought that it was supposed to be a shopping bag (although it also reminded me of a cartoon 1 ton weight!)

Anyway, I wanted to mention that I had a similar problem with purchased brush sets getting duplicated, each with two types of icon. It happened several times, and I deleted the duplicates each time...

Like you, I installed them manually, in my case from local backup copies.

In the end, I removed and reinstalled all of the problematic sets and signed out of my account in all apps. Even though I had the automatic downloads disabled, the shopping bag icon did seem to suggest that the account was involved somehow.

One or possibly both of those moves finally fixed the issue for me, so if it happens again to you, maybe try them.