AI Mac tools

[Bryce]

The new MacOS Sequoia introduced the AI tools in the OS. I was watching a YT video that showed being able to access the writing tools by right-clicking on selected text even in applications that don't have the icon. Is there a way to access the standard system right click menu to have access to some of those new features in Affinity or is the new 2.6x in order before this can happen?

[NathanC]

Hi @Bryce apologies for the late reply,

As far as i'm aware these writing tools are not supported in Publisher 2 and are therefore unavailable in the right click context menu, I've moved this thread over to the feedback section of the forums.

[MikeTO]

On 1/10/2025 at 5:42 AM, NathanC said:

Hi @Bryce apologies for the late reply,

As far as i'm aware these writing tools are not supported in Publisher 2 and are therefore unavailable in the right click context menu, I've moved this thread over to the feedback section of the forums.

BTW the command is in Edit > Writing Tools. The submenu is permanently disabled so it's not a big deal.

You can also assign a shortcut to Edit > Writing Tools > Show Writing Tools in Settings, even though you can never select the command.

[Maxdanger]

+1 for this feature from me - I didn't realise developers needed to add support for Writing Tools (I thought the whole attraction was it was available at an OS level on virtually any area with text input).

My workaround is to copy text to word, run Writing Tools command, then paste the output back into Publisher. If it could be supported it would be a big help!

[MikeTO]

The problem with Apple's Writing Tools feature is that you can lose things. It works fine on plain text but at a minimum you will lose your character styles and attributes, or have them applied to the wrong text. Hidden things like footnotes, pinned images, anchors, index marks, cross-references, fields, etc., can be entirely lost. I confirmed these issues with Apple Pages and Microsoft Word.

Even if the feature was available in Affinity, it would be safer to use it on text before placing it into Affinity or any other page layout application.

[Maxdanger]

Yeah it's a fair point, and you're right that you still have these issues to consider when using in Word. But I still feel it's better to have the option to use the AI tools in Affinity (at the risk of losing footnotes etc) than the feature being intentionally disabled. After all, Affinity handles undo history fabulously so it's not hard to recover anything accidentally lost.

Suppose I'm an advocate of giving the user the option and letting them decide whether to use it 🙂