Cannot activate licence/login to Affinity (split)

[Arska]

I have problems with activating the license / starting the apps (V2):

• For Affinity Designer 2: I am stuck on the activation step with the "Please try again later" message
• For Affinity Publisher 2: I am stuck on the activation step with the "Please try again later" message
• For Affinity Photo 2: It opens, but it's not activated. If I go to "My Account" it shows "$accountName" and "$accountId" (so some kind of placeholder values)

Based on the suggestions in the forums, I've tried:

• installing both from downloaded dmg files from serif.com and also from AppStore
• deleting the installations multiple times (either with dragging the app from Applications to bin and also with AppCleaner)
• resetting the application settings by launching them with CTRL pressed down
• checking the connection from the licence activation modal window, which just gets stuck (progress bar keeps on moving, nothing happens)
• flushing my local DNS cache
• using other DNS servers, such as 9.9.9.9
• checked that my DNS resolves affinity.api.serifservices.com and affinity.serif.com correctly (are there any other domains that I should check?)
• using with and without VPNs
• ensured my date & time are correct
• starting a 30 day trial, but the licence activation modal doesn't allow it (nothing happens)
• deleting any Affinity/Serif related files from Application Support directory and then reinstalling the apps
• opening the apps with sudo

I am running macOs Sonoma 14.1.2 on a M1 Pro Macbook Pro 14".

Any suggestions?

[Callum]

Hi Arska, 

Welcome to the forums

Please could you try navigating to the following path ~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs/v2/ and try deleting the licence.dat and/or cs.dat found there to see if this solves your issues?

Thanks
C

[Arska]

Hi!

I didn't have licence[.cs].dat files there, but (as I didn't know about that location before and hence had not tried deleting it before), I deleted:
~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs
~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs.beta
~/Library/Group Containers/6LVTQB9699.com.seriflabs.extensions

… and also removed the apps as well. Then reinstalled them again and it fixed the issue! Great!

Thank you very much for helping getting this issue resolved!