Affinity was not responding on my Mac, I forced quit application, now, AFTER RESTARTING Affinity, the files I was using are now MISSING!!!

[HJMEX]

What should I do??

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

What kind of operation were you doing when the program stopped responding?

When you say "the files you were using are gone" can you tell us more about them. Were they files you had just created (File > New) and were editing? Were they pre-existing files that you had Opened?

[HJMEX]

47 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

What kind of operation were you doing when the program stopped responding?

When you say "the files you were using are gone" can you tell us more about them. Were they files you had just created (File > New) and were editing? Were they pre-existing files that you had Opened?

Hi!  Thanks for your help.  I was using two files that had a lot of layers.  I used them as templates to create sime-size PNGs.  In about 6-8 months I had accumulated maybe 50 layers in each file.  Now, those files are gone.   Again, thanks for your help.  What should I do now?

[Aammppaa]

Were the files saved locally (on a HD or SSD in your machine), or on network / cloud storage?

[HJMEX]

Hi Aammppaa.

 

I had the files on my HD, even they were on my desktop as they were files I use every day.  Thanks for your comment!

[HJMEX]

2 minutes ago, Aammppaa said:

Were the files saved locally (on a HD or SSD in your machine), or on network / cloud storage?

I had the files on my HD, even they were on my desktop as they were files I use every day.  Thanks for your comment!

 

[Aammppaa]

Do you use backup software such as Time Machine?

I am not on Mac, so don't know much, but perhaps you can recover a recent backup...

 

[v_kyr]

If you don't have made own backups (which is always a good idea to make periodically) then look whether there possibly are some by Affinity previously autogenerated "autosave" files available for those templates files. - BTW, you didn't told which Affinity app (APub, APh, ADe) wasn't responsive here and so what sort of app files have disappeared.

[walt.farrell]

Terminating the application should not do anything to delete files you were working on, unless (possibly) you were Saving or Exporting the files when you terminated it.

[HJMEX]

38 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

If you don't have made own backups (which is always a good idea to make periodically) then look whether there possibly are some by Affinity previously autogenerated "autosave" files available for those templates files. - BTW, you didn't told which Affinity app (APub, APh, ADe) wasn't responsive here and so what sort of app files have disappeared.

Affinity Photo.  Thanks v_kyr.    Is there any particular folder which Affinity photo generates auto-saves?

[HJMEX]

Maybe I was saving a file and the application became unresponsive.  Don't remember.   I have to say though, the same thing happened two years ago working with Photoshop.  The application became unresponsive, I forced quit, and the same thing happened: the opened files disappeared.   So, no disrespect to Affinity, over this

[HJMEX]

No time machine!!!

[v_kyr]

24 minutes ago, HJMEX said:

Is there any particular folder which Affinity photo generates auto-saves?

Depends on the APh version (1 or 2) and from where bought (Apple Store or Affinity store).

V1 from Apple store:

• /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/autosave/"

V1 from Affinity Store:

• /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/autosave"

Do a MacOS Spotlight search after "*.autosave" file locations!

[HJMEX]

15 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Depends on the APh version (1 or 2) and from where bought (Apple Store or Affinity store).

V1 from Apple store:

• /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinityphoto/Data/Library/Application Support/autosave/"

V1 from Affinity Store:

• /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Affinity Photo/autosave"

Do a MacOS Spotlight search after "*.autosave" file locations!

I have Affinity photo2, which I bought from Affinity's website.

Do you have the search path for AP2?

Thanks!

 

HJ

 

 

[v_kyr]

Search for an "autosave" folder under one of these MacOS paths listed here ...

 

[thomaso]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Do a MacOS Spotlight search after "*.autosave" file locations!

A macOS Spotlight search often excludes Library / System folders. Those need to get added (included) manually as search criteria.

[v_kyr]

11 hours ago, thomaso said:

A macOS Spotlight search often ...

There are better and much more powerful ways here to search after specific files through the OS filesystem completely via the command shell (Terminal.app etc.). People have just to discover the OS possibilities ...

Quote

find ~/Library -name *.autosave 2>/dev/null

find / -name *.autosave 2>/dev/null

... etc.

• See the find man page
• How to Find a File on Mac Terminal <-- ***
• See the mdfind man page (spotlight search)
• ... etc.

[thomaso]

4 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

There are better and much more powerful ways

I was just trying to point out potential problems with the Spotlight search you mentioned 😉

Depending on "better" an extra .app maybe more verbose with comfortable GUI for handling of in- and output than a 'Terminal' / command line search, for instance "Find Any File.app":

 

[v_kyr]

46 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Depending on "better" an extra .app maybe more verbose with comfortable GUI for handling of in- and output ...

Which all do behind the GUI scenes pretty much the same here, namely reusing OS find command functionality. Further you have to pay for that if you keep using it. Also until you've clicked together and filled out all search criterias for that, the cmdline tool may have instead already finished the job x-times before! - To me such tools are more meant for people who (maybe sadly) do not have any knowledge about their OS. So those who need for every trivial to perform OS related task some usually unneeded chicky clicky mickey tool, instead of just discovering what their OS already comes with and offers right out of the box (without any further software downloads and payments).

However, beside the above said you can of course always do (no need to ask) all that and much more via ...

• Interview with a VIM Enthusiast
• https://xkcd.com/378/
• Interview with an Emacs Enthusiast
• ...etc.

😉

[thomaso]

32 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

for every trivial to perform OS related task some usually unneeded chicky clicky mickey tool

Again, remember, it was you hinting to Spotlight initially. – If you now consider your alternative hints, the required code, the manuals and man-pages to read or to learn by heart for a fluent workflow …

3 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Quote

find ~/Library -name *.autosave 2>/dev/null

find / -name *.autosave 2>/dev/null

... etc.

• See the find man page
• How to Find a File on Mac Terminal <-- ***
• See the mdfind man page (spotlight search)
• ... etc.

… then both your terms "trivial" and "unneeded" sound quite arbitrary and could be used as well vice versa without changing the sense. 🦄

I admire your coding experience and skills – but regarding "clicky" I don't feel an advantage in clicking keyboard keys instead of menu entries in this situation. Well, actually humans wouldn't need Affinity and code any design with manually typed or with copied/pasted text only, for instance

https://processing.org/examples ,  https://play.ertdfgcvb.xyz/#/src/demos/dyna  ,  https://codepen.io/sdras/pen/gogVRX , etc.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Again, remember, it was you hinting to Spotlight initially. – If you now consider your alternative hints, the required code, the manuals and man-pages to read or to learn by heart for a fluent workflow …

Jip, it doesn't hurt to learn & know one or two things more here, as the OP seems to not be able to find the related autosave app folders via the Spotlight GUI way (?), I pointed to some even more powerful CLI ways to search & find what he's after!

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

...I don't feel an advantage in clicking keyboard keys instead of menu entries in this situation.

To each his own, though you probably would be lost on setting up and customizing any real Unix/Linux system here, especially when adapting & customizing specific drivers ... and so on.

1 hour ago, thomaso said:

Well, actually humans wouldn't need Affinity and code any design with manually typed or with copied/pasted text only, for instance

https://processing.org/examples ,  https://play.ertdfgcvb.xyz/#/src/demos/dyna ...

Not really, as there are also enough declarative possibilities. - Add to that ...

• DrawBot
• PlotDevice
• ... etc.

... and for the more clicky way ...

• NodeBox
• NodeBox for OpenGL
• Primitive
• ... etc.

 

[HJMEX]

HAPPY ENDING!

 

I tried to use the search suggestions posted here but none of them worked on my mac.  Nevertheless, luckily I found an old copy of my template in perfect conditions.

Thanks everybody for your support and help suggestions.  Nice to have a support community on this GREAT Photoshop-alternative, image editing software.

 

Sincerely,

 

Hector

[v_kyr]

7 minutes ago, HJMEX said:

Nevertheless, luckily I found an old copy of my template in perfect conditions.

Then don't forget to periodically make backups in future and also to keep copies of that somewhere too! 😉

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, HJMEX said:

I tried to use the search suggestions posted here but none of them worked on my mac.

Curious which way you tried … if even @v_kyr's link to a Serif list of concrete file paths didn't work for you.

Now I wonder if the attached macOS file would get you there with one click:

spotlight search incl. system-files.savedSearch.zip

If I unpack this zip + double-click the object (suffix: ".savedSearch") I get a finder window with the search result for ".autosave". I assume not the result but rather the search criteria are saved in this file. With click on the cog icon in the finder windows title bar I can select to display the search criteria.

[Oufti]

54 minutes ago, thomaso said:

I wonder if the attached macOS file would get you there with one click

Instantly! 

(I revealed the search criterions.)

 

[Edit] For information, the first file is the only actual .autosave file, in my user's library. The three others are old backup copies made for testing purpose. 

Edited August 3, 2023 by Oufti