Icons display bug since Affinity 2.5.6

[Thomahawk]

Mac OS 14.7.2
Affinity 2.5.6 and 2.5.7

Affinity Document icons are not shown anymore, no matter what I do. I already used any procedure to delete the Mac OS icon cache, also made the OS update. Nothing solves this.

I always need Affinity icons for afDesigner and afPublisher. Only for afPhoto I use preview icons. Only this way I have a good overview over my amounts of documents. 

I can change finder folders to not show preview, ONLY THEN I get the Affinity icons, but then I have no preview of the others. This started right after the update to Affinity 2.5.6

This bug is incredibly annoying.

I already posted this in feedback and suggestions. (I thought I had posted it here in bugs but found today that I confused it with feedback).

 

[NathanC]

Hi @Thomahawk,

It's likely that 'Save thumbnails with documents' is disabled in Affinity Designer and Publisher under Settings -> General. Having this setting disabled will only generate a blank thumbnail preview when saving files out of the apps. If you re-enable this setting, and then create a new document, add any content (e.g a red rectangle) and then save it this should generate a thumbnail preview with that shape visible, and also affect saved documents moving forward.

Please note that this will not correct historical documents that have already been saved without a thumbnail, after re-enabling this setting you will need to re-open a file, trigger any action (e.g move anything and then undo) and then save again, it should then hopefully generate a thumbnail for that document provided the app setting is enabled.

 

[Thomahawk]

That is exactly the problem. Without "Save thumbnails with documents" the affinity apps have always and still must save a document with its affinity document icon, not a blank one, as if the document is not affiliated with any application.

And no, saving it again now does still not solve this. The icons stay blank, also for new documents.

[Thomahawk]

By the way, thumbnail icons are not useful for layout pages from publisher or designer, their content is usually too small to identify in a list of documents in the finder. Thumbnails really only make sense for photos where there is usually one single image over the whole icon size.

[Thomahawk]

This is how I always had it until Affinity came with the update 2.5.6

(Thumbnails on for afPhoto, thumbnaisl off for afPublisher and afDesigner)

 

Now I must deactivate finder-option "show preview icon" to at least identify af documents, but loose the photo previews

 

Or let finder-option "show preview icon" activated, see the photos but no visual identification for af documents, which makes no sense at all

[NathanC]

If you have 'Save thumbnails with documents' disabled in the app Settings -> General and save an native affinity document out of it's respective app, it will save out with an empty thumbnail, as it excludes thumbnails from being stored within the saved document contents. See the below comparison where I have saved the exact same document out of Photo 2 twice, once with 'Save thumbnails with documents' enabled and the other without. As demonstrated I have a visible thumbnail and Preview visible in the 'Get info' menu for one and without for the other.

I've even changed the default app to an entirely different application, and the the thumbnail is still visible.

In your latest screenshot the Finder window reveals  that you do have a thumbnail for an .afphoto file, but not .afpub or .afdesign which indicates that these files two have been saved out of their respective apps without this option enabled historically.

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9 minutes ago, Thomahawk said:

This is how I always had it until Affinity came with the update 2.5.6

(Thumbnails on for afPhoto, thumbnaisl off for afPublisher and afDesigner)

 

Thanks, this has given some clarity to the issue, documents historically saved without a thumbnail preview evidently displayed their respective affinity app icon, whereas post 2.5.6 update with the Seqouia thumbnail fix has instead replaced these with an entirely blank preview, I'll get this logged with the developers.

[Thomahawk]

Thanks. So when I understand you correctly, developers changed something in order to make app icons correctly work in Sequoia, but it messed things up in Sonoma, obviously.

Well, I will see. I hope to upgrade to Mac OS 15 soon.

...but you know how it goes; every update you hope for something to get fixed but get a bunch of new bugs instead 😅

[Thomahawk]

While we are at it, I also noted that affinity documents with labels in finder loose their labels when saving them again.

[Thomahawk]

Now updated to 2.6

The bug is still there. I am so frustrated!!!

[Thomahawk]

This is so annoying!!!!! And no solution in sight whatsoever.

Would an update to Mac OS 10.15 maybe solve this? I do not like to risk this. My Mac is running fine - this nerving Affinity bug is about the only problem I have. From my experience, if I update with the hope to solve this, I will probably get a ton of other problems and who knows if it even solves the Affinity bug.

[Bound by Beans]

The expected behavior must be that if no preview is intended then the file shouldn’t include any thumbnail data at all? Saving a blank thumbnail causes macOS to interpret that thumbnail data as present, which in turn makes the system display an empty thumbnail instead of the standard app icon. Or am I wrong?

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, Bound by Beans said:

The expected behavior must be that if no preview is intended then the file shouldn’t include any thumbnail data at all? Saving a blank thumbnail causes macOS to interpret that thumbnail data as present, which in turn makes the system display an empty thumbnail instead of the standard app icon. Or am I wrong?

I think you are correct.

[Thomahawk]

Wrong. If no thumbnail preview is set for documents, the app document icons must be used. As it always was before 2.5.6

[Thomahawk]

Also strange is that the documents info window shows the icon correctly. Only in the finder and only with affinity apps, a blank icon appears instead.

[Bound by Beans]

4 hours ago, Thomahawk said:

Wrong. If no thumbnail preview is set for documents, the app document icons must be used. As it always was before 2.5.6

That's what I'm saying as well. Theoretically, if no thumbnail is stored in the file, macOS must infer that the generic app icon should be displayed instead. But if a blank thumbnail is stored in the file, macOS assumes there is a thumbnail and displays the blank one. However, it's impossible for me to determine which is the case.

macOS switched to a new thumbnail methodology and retired the old engine, and Serif hastily adapted accordingly. One or both parties messed up.