How Do I Turn Off The ~lock Files ... It's Killing My Workflow

[Hmnvtn]

How do I turn off ~lock files? I'm not on a network so I don't need them, and they are killing my workflow. I have to disable my iDrive sync to use Affinity Photo now or I end up with visible ~lock files all over the place ... AND deleting them is deleting my original files or any changes I made. I can't use Photo until I figure a way to turn these things off!

[Hmnvtn]

I completely close out Affinty Photo and I've still got ~lock files all over the damn place ... what a waste of my day trying to figure this out.

[Hmnvtn]

Is there a place where I can download Photo v2.1 ?

[Dan C]

Hi @Hmnvtn,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Unfortunately there's no option to 'disable' the lock files the Affinity app generates, my apologies.

These files should be deleted automatically, provided that the document is cleanly closed from the Affinity app (ie the app does not crash). You can find out more about these here - 

3 hours ago, Hmnvtn said:

deleting them is deleting my original files or any changes I made

The lock files generated are not 'tied' to the Affinity document, and do not control or affect the files saved changes. These lock files can be deleted by the app (as above, when the document is closed) or by the user and it will not affect the Affinity document itself or the most recent changes. They are completely separate files.

Does the above only occur in your 'iDrive' locations only?

3 hours ago, Hmnvtn said:

Is there a place where I can download Photo v2.1 ?

Are you using Affinity on Windows, macOS or iPad please? Did you install the app from the Affinity Store or Mac App Store / Windows Store?

[Hmnvtn]

All image files reside in the iDrive folder on my Mac. Affinity 1 and Affinity 2 were purchased via the Affinity store. I realize they are separate files, but their deletion and iDrive status are 100% affecting the original file.

[Hmnvtn]

40 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Hi @Hmnvtn,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

Unfortunately there's no option to 'disable' the lock files the Affinity app generates, my apologies.

These files should be deleted automatically, provided that the document is cleanly closed from the Affinity app (ie the app does not crash). You can find out more about these here - 

The lock files generated are not 'tied' to the Affinity document, and do not control or affect the files saved changes. These lock files can be deleted by the app (as above, when the document is closed) or by the user and it will not affect the Affinity document itself or the most recent changes. They are completely separate files.

Does the above only occur in your 'iDrive' locations only?

Are you using Affinity on Windows, macOS or iPad please? Did you install the app from the Affinity Store or Mac App Store / Windows Store?

Yeah ... you're wrong. They are not deleted automatically in spite of what they are expected to do. Close Affinity, reboot my Mac, and they remain. And, they are fracking up my system.  I guess, back to Photoshop for me until Affinity can fix the problem.

[Hmnvtn]

Alternatively, I can roll back to 2.1 until this issue is resolved. Anyone have a link or know where I can download it?

[Dan C]

38 minutes ago, Hmnvtn said:

All image files reside in the iDrive folder on my Mac (...) I realize they are separate files, but their deletion and iDrive status are 100% affecting the original file.

Thanks for confirming that for me - this file deletion does not occur in a non 'iDrive' folder in our internal testing, therefore this indicates that this is likely controlled/caused by iDrive as mentioned the Affinity app does not have this type of control over your files.

1 minute ago, Hmnvtn said:

They are not deleted automatically in spite of what they are expected to do. Close Affinity, reboot my Mac, and they remain

As above, this works as expected in a non-iDrive location. If you create/save your Affinity file in a non-synced folder, you should find this works as expected - so it's certainly possible that iDrive is 'holding' control of these files, after the Affinity app generates them.

I'll be sure to inform our QA team of this service for further testing with our lock files, to ensure we're handling these files correctly from our end - but you may also want to contact iDrive to inform them of the symbolic link seemingly being created between the files, where there shouldn't be one.

38 minutes ago, Hmnvtn said:

Affinity 1 and Affinity 2 were purchased via the Affinity store.

If you wish to 'roll back' to a previous version, you can find these for download at the below links:

Photo - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/photo/2/ 
Designer -  https://store.serif.com/update/macos/designer/2/ 
Publisher - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/publisher/2/

However as far as I'm aware, all versions of Affinity V2 moving forward will continue to use these lock files, therefore you may want to inform iDrive of this issue now, so that it can be addressed by them in the future.

I hope this clears things up

[Hmnvtn]

1 minute ago, Dan C said:

Thanks for confirming that for me - this file deletion does not occur in a non 'iDrive' folder in our internal testing, therefore this indicates that this is likely controlled/caused by iDrive as mentioned the Affinity app does not have this type of control over your files.

As above, this works as expected in a non-iDrive location. If you create/save your Affinity file in a non-synced folder, you should find this works as expected - so it's certainly possible that iDrive is 'holding' control of these files, after the Affinity app generates them.

I'll be sure to inform our QA team of this service for further testing with our lock files, to ensure we're handling these files correctly from our end - but you may also want to contact iDrive to inform them of the symbolic link seemingly being created between the files, where there shouldn't be one.

If you wish to 'roll back' to a previous version, you can find these for download at the below links:

Photo - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/photo/2/ 
Designer -  https://store.serif.com/update/macos/designer/2/ 
Publisher - https://store.serif.com/update/macos/publisher/2/

However as far as I'm aware, all versions of Affinity V2 moving forward will continue to use these lock files, therefore you may want to inform iDrive of this issue now, so that it can be addressed by them in the future.

I hope this clears things up

Yeah ... downloading 2.1 now. However, there were no issues until the introduction of lock files in 2.2. Accordingly, you can contact iDrive or not and find a solution, if it is cost effective ... I don't have time to chase down bugs in your software created by your updates. Easier (although, more expensive) for me simply to move back to Photoshop, it's still working without issue ...

[walt.farrell]

Is "iDrive" the same thing as "iCloud Drive"?

If so, I'm puzzled that you're having the issue described here, as so far in my use it seems to me that 

• the ~lock~ files are Hidden; and
• iCloud ignores Hidden files when synchronizing.

[Hmnvtn]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

Is "iDrive" the same thing as "iCloud Drive"?

If so, I'm puzzled that you're having the issue described here, as so far in my use it seems to me that 

• the ~lock~ files are Hidden; and
• iCloud ignores Hidden files when synchronizing.

No, iDrive ... the top rated icloud drive alternative.

IDrive® Cloud Backup & Storage solutions for home and business

 

[Patrick Connor]

We have now retested with iDrive and confirm we cannot replicate your any of the problems described in your post.

• Lock (~lock~) files are created and uploaded to iDrive but the same happens for Microsoft Word and InDesign's lock files (this looks like a problem on iDrive end not recognising/using industry standard the ignore flag [a trailing '~' on the filename])
• When a file is successfully closed in our apps, the lock (~lock~) file gets deleted from the local drive. It was be deleted from iDrive itself when it syncs again. Forcing a sync by turning it off/on removes the file as expected.
• There is no concept of “linked-but-different” files on any OS These are 2 independent files used by our application. So deleting a lock file cannot delete another one and iDrive would not do that either. Serif testing team could not find any recipe where this happens.

If you can provide any more information as to how your setup may differ from our test platform we can try again. 

[loukash]

On 11/14/2023 at 7:51 AM, Hmnvtn said:

How do I turn off ~lock files?

Frankly, I'd like to have such an option, too. It's nothing that I would have ever personally needed.

Recently I was creating some AppleScript workflows in Finder, and the ~lock~ files definitely came into my way. I had to work around it like this: 

 -- Affinity workaround:
set pathString to fileReference as text
set searchString to "~lock~"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to searchString
set textList to every text item of pathString
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
set newReference to textList as string
set fileReference to newReference as alias

[gionaguidi]

Samething here using pCloud. Multiple ~lock~ files that are stored in the virtual drive 

[Patrick Connor]

1 hour ago, gionaguidi said:

Same thing here using pCloud. Multiple ~lock~ files that are stored in the virtual drive 

Is there an option in pcloud to exclude specific file extensions?

[walt.farrell]

18 hours ago, Patrick Connor said:

Is there an option in pcloud to exclude specific file extensions?

Yes, there is:

pCloud Help: https://www.pcloud.com/help/drive-help-center/how-do-i-exclude-folders-or-files-from-my-backup-or-sync

---

However, in a test I just did on my Windows system, pCloud does not Sync the ~lock~ files, perhaps because they're Hidden? So I'm not sure why @gionaguidi is having this problem.

What pCloud functions are you using that show this problem, @gionaguidi? And what OS do you use?