Open Recent not working for Affinity apps in Sequoia

[Furry]

I don't know if the fault is one for Affinity or one for Apple. When I go to the Open Recent command in the File menu, it shows the titles of a number of recently opened files but selecting any one of them produces no result. If I go ionstead to Open…, I can negotiate through my folder network to the file I want and it opens without any fuss. This seems to apply all three Affinity apps.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Does anyone ghave a soluition? Or do I need to wait for the next version?

[LionelD]

@Furry On M3 MBP with Sequoia 15.1.1 and latest AD2 I do not have this problem. And I Open/Recent quite a lot.  Do you use Finder to change folder structure and/or rename file externally?  I’ve had a couple of cases where doing that confused AD2..

Regards

 

[Furry]

Thanks for your reply, LionelD.

I'm using Affinity apps (all three) on a 2013 M3 iMac running Sequoia 15.1.1. (Yes, I will have to change the small print at the foot of my messages but haven't worked out how to do that yet!)

I have noticed this most with Aff Pub, but it has happened too on both Designer and Photo. It can happen with a file I have just saved and closed and yoiu would think the System/Finder and Affinity between them would know where that file is. I have no trouble finding it but sometimes that means negotiating through several folders. Very frustrating.

[MikeTO]

Try clearing the Recent menu, opening a document, closing it, and then opening it from the Recent menu. Does that solve the problem?

[R C-R]

Go to File > Open Recent > More... or File > New & click on Recent to display a window (hopefully) showing thumbnail previews of recently opened items. If you single-click on any one of them, you should see the file path to it displayed at the bottom of the Recent window. Does this show the file is in a local folder on your drive or something else?

[Furry]

I am beginning to suspect that the problem is not an Affinity one but an Apple one. A few other weird things have been happening, such as being told I could not save a file (written by me) when I had made some small change to it. It was not an Affinity file. Yet I could save it to another folder without any worry and then replace the older file with the newer one.

I have always had a deep belief that computers are only loosely connected to reality!

[jmwellborn]

On 12/10/2024 at 4:07 PM, R C-R said:

Go to File > Open Recent > More... or File > New & click on Recent to display a window (hopefully) showing thumbnail previews of recently opened items. If you single-click on any one of them, you should see the file path to it displayed at the bottom of the Recent window. Does this show the file is in a local folder on your drive or something else?

This problem has popped up here for the first time in all three apps.  I am sticking with v. 2.6.0 and have been experimenting.  It seems to be random. When I use FILE>RECENT nothing can be accessed. When I check with File>New Recent my files are there, and the path displayed at the bottom of that window shows that the files are on the Desktop. But when I click on Open, nothing happens all of the time in Publisher, all but one time in Photo, and all in Designer except for the two most re documents which are about one week old.

Very odd!

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

When I use FILE>RECENT nothing can be accessed.

Do you mean File > Open Recent? When you say nothing can be accessed do you mean no recents are shown at all or just that they are but nothing happens when you try to click one of them to open it?

7 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

When I check with File>New Recent my files are there, and the path displayed at the bottom of that window shows that the files are on the Desktop. But when I click on Open, nothing happens all of the time in Publisher, all but one time in Photo, and all in Designer except for the two most re documents which are about one week old.

I assume you mean the File > New > Recent category on the left, correct? When nothing happens for files with file paths shown as being on the desktop, are those files actually shown on the Desktop on your screen? If you create a brand new file & save it to the local (not cloud!) desktop does it show up on the desktop on your screen & in recents does it show up & can be opened from there?

[jmwellborn]

27 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Do you mean File > Open Recent? When you say nothing can be accessed do you mean no recents are shown at all or just that they are but nothing happens when you try to click one of them to open it?

I assume you mean the File > New > Recent category on the left, correct? When nothing happens for files with file paths shown as being on the desktop, are those files actually shown on the Desktop on your screen? If you create a brand new file & save it to the local (not cloud!) desktop does it show up on the desktop on your screen & in recents does it show up & can be opened from there?

Yes, I mean the File>New>Recent category on the left. I just created a brand new file in Designer and saved it to my desktop (where all the other files that would not save are located), then checked both with that procedure and with File>Open Recent.  In both cases the newly created file popped up.  There must be a limit to the time that a recent file is saved, but I cannot find anything in Designer Settings that can affect that. I have checked with Apple System Settings and cannot find anything there.  

I have tried File>New>Recent in Designer just now, and have discovered that when I right click on a thumbnail for a file, I get the message SHOW IN FINDER. I am then directed to the desktop, where my file is located.  If I then click on that I get the OPEN WITH message, and choosing Designer 2, get the file immediately.  So something is amiss within Designer (Photo, and Publisher).

[MikeTO]

1. Ensure macOS System Settings > Control Centre > Recent documents, applications and servers is set to something other than None
2. Start Affinity, choose File > Open Recent > Clear Menu, restart Affinity, and try again

[nickbatz]

If none of the above works, I'd suggest running Disk Utility on your drive(s) to make sure nothing funny is going on with the directory. 

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, jmwellborn said:

There must be a limit to the time that a recent file is saved, but I cannot find anything in Designer Settings that can affect that.

That seems to be true for me, but only for what pops up if I click & hold on the app's Dock icon. For File > Open Recent &  File > New > Recent category  I continue to get a long list of (more or less) recently opened files ... but maybe weirdly  File > Open Recent shows fewer ones than does the File > New > Recent category (about 20 vs. 28 in AD). In my system settings recents is set to 10, so that does not affect what Affinity's recents show.

One other thing to try is to select several of your files shown on the desktop & drag them into an open Affinity window to load them all at once. After they have use File > Close All to close them & then see if they show up in recents. (It should not be necessary to save any of them for this test.)

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, MikeTO said:

1. Ensure macOS System Settings > Control Centre > Recent documents, applications and servers is set to something other than None

That does not seem to have any effect on Affinity for me -- as I wrote above in System it is set to 10 but in the Affinities I see at least twice that number. Have you tested this yourself, perhaps by temporarily setting it to a small if not zero value?

[MikeTO]

17 minutes ago, R C-R said:

That does not seem to have any effect on Affinity for me -- as I wrote above in System it is set to 10 but in the Affinities I see at least twice that number. Have you tested this yourself, perhaps by temporarily setting it to a small if not zero value?

Yes and I tested it again just now. I keep it on 15. If I set it to 5, restart Affinity, and the menu shrinks to 5. Set it to 15, restart Affinity, and the menu is back to 15. 

[R C-R]

1 minute ago, MikeTO said:

Yes and I tested it again just now. I keep it on 15. If I set it to 5, restart Affinity, and the menu shrinks to 5. Set it to 15, restart Affinity, and the menu is back to 15. 

Odd. For me, it has no effect. Restarting Affinity just wipes out what the Dock popup shows but does not affect what shows in  File > Open Recent or  the File > New > Recent category . System still at 10, the Affinities all routinely show more than that.

Maybe a Catalina thing?

One other thing to try: from the File menu select Open recent > More. Does that show anything different?

[jmwellborn]

@MikeTO and @R C-R and @nickbatz we are having a 6-hour internet shutdown for “scheduled maintenance” here today, starting in 20 minutes.  Just got back to my desktop. I will try all of these Suggestions once we are back up to speed here.  Didn’t want you to think I had ignored your help!

[jmwellborn]

 

 

On 5/7/2025 at 3:36 PM, MikeTO said:

1. Ensure macOS System Settings > Control Centre > Recent documents, applications and servers is set to something other than None
2. Start Affinity, choose File > Open Recent > Clear Menu, restart Affinity, and try again

Well, that was a major flop.  Tried this in Publisher 2.6.0. Clear Menu cleared it all right, but when I restarted Affinity, Recent was completely empty.  Also FILE>NEW>RECENT was empty.  Good thing I have this stuff stored on my desktop, because I am now back to square one with a vengeance.

I also tried the good old Control l+ Open thing, to see if that was the issue.  Nope.

As an aside, I must be a neanderthal idiot, because I cannot find System Settings>Control Centre>Recent documents, applications and servers.  By the way, I am not updating to Sequoia, which is what the red dot is all about.

 

 

 

 

[jmwellborn]

I have just tried this with the latest Beta.  Same issue. I am stumped.  

On 5/7/2025 at 6:14 PM, R C-R said:

That does not seem to have any effect on Affinity for me -- as I wrote above in System it is set to 10 but in the Affinities I see at least twice that number. Have you tested this yourself, perhaps by temporarily setting it to a small if not zero value?

Where in System Settings can I set anything?  And where in Affinities do you see the number?  I am at a complete and utter loss, particularly because when I go the File>New>Recent route I get perfectly fine thumbnails of many recent documents, but when I highlight any of them other than the first one or two, and click Open, nothing whatsoever happens . 

[R C-R]

3 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

Where in System Settings can I set anything?  And where in Affinities do you see the number?

I am running Catalina so the system level recents may be different for you but for me it is in General, about 3/4 of the way down the page. Assuming the search feature in System Settings (System Preferences for me on Catalina) works the same, type "recent" in it & the item with "Recent Items" in it should  be indicated. Hop that helps.

I do not see the recent numbers anywhere in the Affinities; I had to count them manually so I could cite them here.

41 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

Tried this in Publisher 2.6.0. Clear Menu cleared it all right, but when I restarted Affinity, Recent was completely empty.  Also FILE>NEW>RECENT was empty.

I am pretty sure that is the way it is supposed to work. So I think what was suggested was to first clear it, then use Finder or whatever to find some of your files, open & close them in APub (no need to resave them), & see if they all show up & where. So sort of a destructive reset, so to speak.

[jmwellborn]

@R C-R Thank you so much!  Here is what I have in System Settings>General. Nothing.  I did try your "destructive reset" and that definitely works.  The problem obviously lies in the length of time in which a "recent document" has been lurking. But where I can set the number of documents to be retained in that category has me completely stumped.

[R C-R]

19 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

Here is what I have in System Settings>General. Nothing.

Does your System Settings window have a search box? If so, & you type "recent" in it, does any item highlight or do they all dim out?

22 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

The problem obviously lies in the length of time in which a "recent document" has been lurking. But where I can set the number of documents to be retained in that category has me completely stumped.

If it is anything for you like it is for me, there does not seem to be any way to control how many items show up in the File > Open Recent list -- IOW, what the cutoff time is for what is considered recent by the app. All I know is if I drag several files into it, they are added to the list, potentially displacing some that were already there.

But weirdly, the "More" window shows them all, & the dock popup shows the original list without the ones I just dragged in. And the dock list gets wiped out if I quit & restart the app ... ~90% of the time but sometimes not, for no reason I can fathom.

So I have gotten into the habit on restarts to use the More list (which I have set a keyboard shortcut for) to open a subset of the items shown there, which as best as I can tell do not have a cutoff date.

Makes little or no sense to me but I just live with it; supplemented by Finder searches & 'smart' folders when necessary.

[MikeTO]

Go to System Settings and search for "recent" and then click Recent Documents, Applications, and Servers. 

[jmwellborn]

@MikeTO  Thank you.  I found it.  My setting for recent documents, applications, and servers was set at 10.  I changed it to 15.  Then I tried Photo and Designer.  Nothing has changed.  In Photo I could Open Recent and acquire the first three documents, but not a single one thereafter.  In Designer I could acquire the first two.  In both apps, if I used FILE>NEW>OPEN, I could highlight any one of many documents (20 or more) but when I click on Open, nothing happens.

Whatever has happened, this is a recent development.  I also downloaded the Photo Beta 2.6.3.3309 and was unable to acquire a single document via any Open Recent method.  

[R C-R]

6 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

In both apps, if I used FILE>NEW>OPEN, I could highlight any one of many documents (20 or more) but when I click on Open, nothing happens.

Not to state the obvious but this seems to be a much different & more serious issue than just Open Recent not working as expected.

You said you tried the CTRL startup reset without success so it might be time to consider reinstalling at least one of the apps to see if anything changes. It doesn't seem likely that it would but there is not much else left to try.

[jmwellborn]

@R C-R it is all three apps plus one Beta.  I am on the phone with Apple right now to see if icloud storage is causing a conflict.  More later.  You are so kind to stick with me on this!!