Confusing use of Affinity iCloud folders

[GavinEadie]

I went to save a Publisher document and was offered an iCloud folder for storage [see enclosed image].  Nice except it was "Affinity Publisher Beta - iCloud" and I'm not running a beta (and haven't since mid-2021), so I went and looked at the ~com~seriflabs~ folders:

drwx------    3 gavin  staff    96 Oct 15 10:43 6LVTQB9699~com~seriflabs~affinitydesigner
drwx------    3 gavin  staff    96 Oct 15 10:43 iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitydesigner
drwx------    3 gavin  staff    96 Oct 15 10:43 iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinityphoto
drwx------    3 gavin  staff    96 Oct 15 10:43 iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher
drwx------@   4 gavin  staff   128 Oct 22 13:03 iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher 3
drwx------@   3 gavin  staff    96 Oct 15 10:43 iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher~beta
drwx------    3 gavin  staff    96 Oct 15 10:43 iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinityshared

.. what a mess!  Two Designer folders and three Publisher folders (Publisher 3!?) and, to add confusion, most of these are not visible in the Finder or Save dialog.  It would be good practice during an install or update to review `/Library/Mobile Documents/` for antique seriflabs folders, and contained material, and move any documents to the right folder and delete the out of date folders.

All but one of the above contained empty Documents folder (excepting Photos, which had files I expected), one of which was dated for the macOS epoch:

gavin@ ~ % ls -al "~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher 3"                    
total 16
drwx------@   4 gavin  staff   128 Oct 22 13:03 .
dr-x------@ 152 gavin  staff  4864 Oct 15 10:43 ..
-rw-r--r--@   1 gavin  staff  6148 Oct 26 21:25 .DS_Store
drwx------    2 gavin  staff    64 Dec 31  1969 Documents

Lest I sound grumpy, I assure you I love all three products .. they are a joy to use .. clean, fast, correct and tasty.  If I am grumpy it's because this (and my other 'screen' bug) are the first evidence of clumsy programming the Affinity has exposed to me.  I know no software (especially my own!) is ever free of bugs but let's stamp on them when we can.

[NathanC]

Hi @GavinEadie,

These 'Application Library' type folders are controlled/created via System Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive > 'Apps syncing to iCloud drive' menu. From a clean slate if you were to set an app to sync with the iCloud drive, this won't immediately create a folder in the iCloud drive but if you were to then open the app and save a file the iCloud sidebar offers the option to save the file to the iCloud folder, at which point the folder is available on the drive.

These folders are currently shared between the V1, V2 and the beta apps but it's possible that your Affinity app library folder structure has gotten into a state and created duplicate app folders at some point in time even back in V1 (E.G the 'Publisher 3' dupe folder).

With the folders being shared this can also create confusion, for example I believe I had originally created my Publisher iCloud app library folder from the beta apps both my V1 and V2 release apps would still associate with this folder, and the folder itself would be called 'Affinity Publisher 2 beta'. I don't think this is expected behaviour and is incredibly confusing so i'll be getting this logged with the developers and will reference your other points on the report.

As I also had the 'Publisher 2 beta' folder as my default iCloud folder for both V1 and V2 release, after removing the beta app I had installed I unsynced Publisher 2 beta from the 'Apps syncing to iCloud drive' menu which removed the folder and it's contents, and then signed out and then back into iCloud on my Mac which then fixed the App library name to 'Affinity Publisher' when my iCloud drive re-synced.

Personally I don't see any real advantage to using these 'app library' folders over just creating and managing my own folders on iCloud, as they do create a-lot of unnecessary hassle and confusion currently.

[GavinEadie]

Wow!  Excellent explanation and good suggestions which I'll try.

What follows is NOT for the casual Affinity user.  It's also the result of incomplete information so it's NOT gospel.  The Affinity developers know the truth, I'm doing some guessing .. caveat emptor.

_____________________________________

Not so simple!  References to files and directories hereafter are relative to "~/Library/Mobile Documents/"

• My goal: Photos, Designer and Publisher interacting with iCloud in the same way and I like your choice - stop using the 'app library' folders and get explicit.  "Getting Explicit" creates directories in the "com~apple~CloudDocs" directory.  This is very good strategy for reasons below.
• You said: "after removing the beta app .. I unsynced Publisher 2 beta from the 'Apps syncing to iCloud drive' menu which removed the folder and its contents" .. that appears to not be the case any more.  All my three apps were "On" in "System Settings > iCloud > iCloud Drive > 'Apps syncing to iCloud drive'" .. I turned them all off and nothing changed.  I didn't logout and login iCloud during that (that may be required but is a step too far) but I did restart the Mac.
• The names of the "~com~seriflabs*" directories are not related to their names in the Finder (and some don't appear in the Finder).  Here's the correspondence on my Mac.  Note that "Affinity Photo" is associated with a contained "Documents" directory and the others aren't.  Also notice my Publisher directory is not an 'app lib'

6LVTQB9699~com~seriflabs~affinitydesigner        → "Affinity Designer"
└── Documents
iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitydesigner
└── Documents                                    → "Affinity Photo"
iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinityphoto
└── Documents
iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher 2
└── Documents
iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher~beta
└── Documents
iCloud~com~seriflabs~affinityshared
└── Documents
icloud~com~seriflabs~affinitypublisher
└── Documents

com~apple~CloudDocs/Affinity Publisher            → "Affinity Publisher"
└── xmas-cards.afpub

• All the above "~com~seriflabs~" directories are locked and cannot be deleted (even with "sudo rm").  This is because they have extra "com.apple.macl" attributes which mean, in short, nothing except the app referred to in this attribute can modify this file/directory - not Finder, not Terminal, etc.  This lock is unbreakable unless SIP is turned off.  My "com.apple.macl" for Designer:

6LVTQB9699~com~seriflabs~affinitydesigner/Documents: com.apple.macl:
00000000  05 00 5E 67 00 1E 5B 48 45 37 84 0F 33 AC 45 5A  |..^g..[HE7..3.EZ|
00000010  8F D6 05 00 58 F5 86 31 E2 F6 4B 2E 90 AA AE 74  |....X..1..K....t|
00000020  16 31 C4 72 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.1.r............|
00000030  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000040  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                          |........|

• Each new version of the Affinity has, I'm guessing, a new identity and so has exclusive modify right to only its own directory.  So Photo 2.3 can read, but not change, documents in the 'app lib' directory created by Photo 2.2 - any modified or new document will go into the new 'app lib' directory created by Photo 2.3.  Similarly, a version 2.3 cannot clean up old 2.2, 2.0, beta, etc directories.  [ For extra points, the app in the above attribute is referred to by the UUID: 58F58631-E2F6-4B2E-90AA-AE741631C472 .. probably "Affinity Designer 2.3" but ???]
• I'd bet that non 'app lib' directories don't suffer such complexity because they can be created outside the confines of an Affinity app.
• Creating such non 'app lib' directories for Affinity apps causes there to be two items with the same name in Finder's view [enclosure].  They are distinguished only by their "Kind" - which is only displayed in a Finder 'List' view.  Never using 'app libs' would make a much cleaner iCloud use.
• Since forensic computing is not my expertise,  I'm stopping.

[DanThe]

Unfortunately this has been an unresolved ongoing issue with the Affinity apps. I just did a fresh install of the three apps which are currently at version 2.5.1 after backing up all the files from the multiple duplicate iCloud app folders then deleting these via either the iCloud storage settings on my Mac or my iOS devices.

When I relaunched each app I created a new document in each and clicked save.  Affinity Photo is the only app that showed the option to save to an Affinity Photo iCloud folder while the other two did not. In each case, I cancelled the save not wanting to deal with this iCloud folder nightmare again.

As mentioned above, the best workaround would be to use the Document folder to save Affinity documents rather than risk losing files because of this unresolved messy issue.

Not wanting to sound irritating but it's really annoying that this has not yet been addressed given it has been like this since version 1 of the apps.  Of all the apps that I own, these are the only ones that are unable to use the Affinity iCloud folders to save files to safely. 😟

Just my two cents.

[Moha Med]

Still,

Same problem since 2019

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/89872-affinity-publisher-icloud-beta-resolved/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/92922-affinity-publisher-beta-corrupted-my-icloud-drive-resolved/

others:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/193203-affinity-publisher-2-folder-missing-in-icloudcom/

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/126845-the-beta-took-over-and-renamed-my-icloud-affinity-publisher-folder/

 

It's annoying how long this problem hasn't been fixed.

 

 

 

Update

Resolve:

- this solution worked before creating an icloud associated publisher folder "from save as"

- affinty publisher app from icloud sycn get deselected "system settings> icloud > apps synced with icloud drive

- then I deleted affinity publisher iCloud.com.seriflabs.affinitypublisher.plist from 

~/Library/Application Support/CloudDocs/session/containers/

from both macs

then restarted mac

then relaunch publisher and selected save as; Now the option to create a new folder is "affinity publisher - icloud"

 

 

 

thanks to this thread:

 

 

Edited June 9, 2024 by Moha Med