Sonoma 14.1 Privacy & Security limits Affinity to Desktop access

[B·Ware]

Affinity 2.2.1 apps only open from the Sonoma 14.1 desktop presumably due to Privacy & Security Files & Folders settings. If a file is elsewhere, "The file could not be opened because permission was denied."

[walt.farrell]

Do you mean that the apps only open files from the desktop? Presumably the apps themselves open from wherever you've installed them (usually Applications).

What Privacy and Security settings do you have specified for the applications? They open files from other folders on my Sonoma 14.1 machine.

[MikeTO]

If you can't open or save your Affinity documents after upgrading macOS, then you likely dismissed a dialog box asking if you wanted to give Affinity access. You can fix this in macOS Settings.

1. Go to the Apple menu and choose System Settings
2. Click Privacy & Security on the left side
3. Click Field and Folders on the right side
4. Expand each of the Affinity app names (ensure you pick the version 2 names if you still have version 1 installed - version 1 doesn't have a very number in this list) and enable all of the access permissions

It should look like this:

[B·Ware]

Only Desktop Folder shows for each V2 Affinity app.

[MikeTO]

45 minutes ago, B·Ware said:

Only Desktop Folder shows for each V2 Affinity app.

I'm not an expert on this but I believe apps have to request access to something before they will show up in the Files and Folders list.

Try copying a simple JPG to a location you want to add, say Downloads. Open that JPG in Affinity, either with File > Open or by dragging it. Did it open?

Make a change to the JPG and then save it. Did you get prompted for access?

Also try restarting macOS for good measure.

Good luck.

[B·Ware]

There are files in folders I want to access but attempts to file>Open give the permission denied message 
(even new files saved to those folders).

[MikeTO]

Somebody else seems to have had this problem a few years ago. Serif asked that user to create a new user account on their computer and see if the problem occurred in that account. It didn't which proved there was an issue with their macOS account settings so it wasn't an Affinity issue. If you try it and have the same problem, I'd advise phoning Apple because it's probably something that went wrong during the OS upgrade.

Did you download Affinity from the Apple App Store or from Serif's website? The App Store version is somewhat sandboxed and while it should have access to your files it's a bit different. If you really don't want to try creating a new account you could download the installers from Serif's website (your universal license for v2 will work for this) and give that a try. If that solves it, delete the App Store version.

Good luck.