[ Suggestion ] Clear all recent files feature

[Sonny Sonny]

After working with much more files, we need to clean up the recent files in startup panel.

Or at least, give us feature that helps us able to remove selected recent files.

[carl123]

You can clear them all with File > Open Recent > Clear

Or more selectively in the startup panel by utilising the right-click "Remove" menu option

 

[Rabari]

It seems the Affinity suite (at least Publisher) tries to locate every file in the Recents menu at startup. This means that if some of the files are off-line, the app appears hanged for a very long time. This should be rectified so that the menu only lists all recent files, but if you try to open a file which has gone off-line, you get an alert to the fact.

[GarryP]

In the “Recent” panel (part of what’s called the “Startup panel” above) there is also a little “Remove” cross-like icon at the top-left of the thumbnail when the mouse is hovering over that thumbnail.

The “Remove” cross-like icon doesn’t remove multiply-selected documents (at least on Windows, for me), but the right-click-Remove option does.

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, Rabari said:

This means that if some of the files are off-line, the app appears hanged for a very long time.

Can you explain what you mean by an “off-line” file?
Do you mean a file which is not on a local storage device, or a file which has been moved/deleted from/on local storage, or something else?

[PaulEC]

I'm not sure if Rabari has the same thing in mind, but I would certainly like an option to only show recent files that are still available to open, and not include ones that have been moved or deleted.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, PaulEC said:

I'm not sure if Rabari has the same thing in mind, but I would certainly like an option to only show recent files that are still available to open, and not include ones that have been moved or deleted.

But the problem with that is that the detection involves looking at files on Network drives or on removable drives, which will as @Rabari mentioned take a long time.

[PaulEC]

50 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

But the problem with that is that the detection involves looking at files on Network drives or on removable drives, which will as @Rabari mentioned take a long time.

I'd take your word for it, but I'm not sure why it would take any longer not to display files no longer available, than to list them, even though you cannot open them! (Which seems a bit pointless to me.)

[Pšenda]

19 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I'd take your word for it, but I'm not sure why it would take any longer not to display files no longer available, than to list them, even though you cannot open them! (Which seems a bit pointless to me.)

Detecting the availability of a file that is remote (network or on a suspend external drive) generally takes much longer than detecting a local file. But of course, it can be solved "intelligently", i.e. list all of them in the menu, and then gradually disable it after detecting the file's inaccessibility.
I's interesting that walt has been "troubled" by the same elementary problem for several years 🙂 

 

[walt.farrell]

42 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I'd take your word for it, but I'm not sure why it would take any longer not to display files no longer available, than to list them, even though you cannot open them! (Which seems a bit pointless to me.)

Listing them is easy. The application is keeping a list of recent files, and it just displays that list.

Filtering out the ones that are no longer available requires actually looking for each of them, on the disk where they were loaded from. And that requires disk I/O, and waiting for the disks (or network) to respond.

[PaulEC]

I do get this, but, in the "Recent" panel there are thumbnails of the recent files, if the file has been moved or deleted there isn't a thumbnail. I can't see why it would be that difficult to have ah option to hide the files with no thumbnails (and, therefore, no links). That would effectively mean that only those files which are available to be opened are displayed, and those that can't be opened would not be.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, PaulEC said:

I do get this, but, in the "Recent" panel there are thumbnails of the recent files, if the file has been moved or deleted there isn't a thumbnail. I can't see why it would be that difficult to have ah option to hide the files with no thumbnails (and, therefore, no links). That would effectively mean that only those files which are available to be opened are displayed, and those that can't be opened would not be.

Good point, Paul.

The applications are apparently already looking for the existance of the files, in order to display the thumbnails, and they could optionally omit the ones that they can't find.

 

[Sonny Sonny]

Update: The issue was updated on the beta release. "Ctrl + A =>  Right Mouse => Remove " is now removing all the files were selected instead of only file that was hover by mouse. Thanks

[Rabari]

Sorry for the late answer. What I meant was: At work we have server with different shares. Sometimes I forget to mount all the shares that possibly have som earlier saved Publisher files (could be a file saved a week ago). If this is the case just trying to open the Recents menu hangs the app for a long time, as it searches for the missing shares. When they are mounted, the menu opens just fine, and I can get to the "Clear Menu" option. 

[Return]

I also do feel that there should be an option to delete recent files when using the ctrl+running up the program.
This is currently only possible to do manually for mac found here.

Or for windows through C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\2.0 (Beta)\Settings\  
deleting the RecentFiles.XML  

Note this should be done per version and per program.
Where YOURNAME is typed, this should be your username for your PC.

C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\2.0 \Settings\
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\2.0 \Settings\ 
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher\2.0 \Settings\
or beta versions
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\Settings\
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\2.0 (Beta)\Settings\ 
C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher\2.0 (Beta)\Settings\

Make sure the program is not running while deleting the xml file.