Mac: Affinity documents are not "Documents" for Finder search purposes.

[mattspace]

I'm using macOS Ventura, could anyone else check this for me: None of my Affinity documents show up in the Finder's Recent category, and when I do a file search for Kind:Document, or manually choose Kind > Document in the search criteria dropdowns, no Affinity documents will show up.

I search for ".afpub" in the finder toolbar search window, it will prompt for Kind: Affinity Publisher Document, and find all my afpub documents. But if I then add the search criteria Kind Document, it finds nothing.

So spotlight thinks Affinity files are not "documents".

It thinks my SketchUP files are documents and finds them ok, so what's going on?

[nickbatz]

I don't know whether this is helpful? (Bad screenshot - I should have included the top part showing that I searched for "goldbird.")

(And I don't know what the locked file is - possibly a recovery file.)

[mattspace]

4 minutes ago, nickbatz said:

I don't know whether this is helpful? (Bad screenshot - I should have included the top part showing that I searched for "goldbird.")

(And I don't know what the locked file is - possibly a recovery file.)

Yeah, that works for me, but the problem is that the Recent category in Finder seems to operate specifically on the Document category, which means none of my Affinity documents show up in it.

[nickbatz]

2 minutes ago, mattspace said:

Yeah, that works for me, but the problem is that the Recent category in Finder seems to operate specifically on the Document category, which means none of my Affinity documents show up in it.

True, so I use Open Recent in Affinity Photo.

It is odd, though, no question.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, mattspace said:

Yeah, that works for me, but the problem is that the Recent category in Finder seems to operate specifically on the Document category, which means none of my Affinity documents show up in it.

Are you talking about the Recent Folders item in Finder's Go menu or something else? If so, as a test, create in (for instance) AD a simple document & save it to the Desktop (which is a folder). Give it an easy to see name like "This is a test" or whatever. Close the document, & check Finder's Go > Recent Folder's list to see if the Desktop folder is listed there. If so, open that folder & look for the saved document. If it is there I think it is working as designed.

[mattspace]

7 hours ago, R C-R said:

Are you talking about the Recent Folders item in Finder's Go menu or something else? If so, as a test, create in (for instance) AD a simple document & save it to the Desktop (which is a folder). Give it an easy to see name like "This is a test" or whatever. Close the document, & check Finder's Go > Recent Folder's list to see if the Desktop folder is listed there. If so, open that folder & look for the saved document. If it is there I think it is working as designed.

No, I'm talking about the Recent category in the Finder Favourites, which is in the sidebar, and also directly in the Go menu. It's a non-user-configurable saved search query, and as far as I can determine seems to be documents in your home directory, and mail attachments, but nothing else in ~/Library.

For some reason, it doesn't seem to consider Affinity files to be Documents... or Images.

[markw]

It’s not just Affinity documents not showing there for me on Monterey, I have noticed other app specific file types also don’t show up there, for example; ArtRage Vitae and Glyphs, even Numbers which is an Apple app is absent.
It only seems to show common “standard” file types that aren't created and used by just one app.🤔

[loukash]

18 minutes ago, markw said:

even Numbers which is an Apple app is absent

"Spreadsheets" have their own category.

[mattspace]

43 minutes ago, markw said:

It’s not just Affinity documents not showing there for me on Monterey, I have noticed other app specific file types also don’t show up there, for example; ArtRage Vitae and Glyphs, even Numbers which is an Apple app is absent.
It only seems to show common “standard” file types that aren't created and used by just one app.🤔

And yet my SketchUP .skp documents are there, my Quickflow .qfl documents. For me .numbers are found. As are my .psd documents, even though I don't have Photoshop on this system, but I do have applications that can read .psd (Sketchbook Pro). My InDesign documents aren't showing up however, and nothing on my system reads .indd

[loukash]

58 minutes ago, mattspace said:

nothing on my system reads .indd

Try https://markzware.com/products/idmarkz. Even the free version is useful for QuickLook, thumbnail preview and some basic content statistics.

[mattspace]

5 minutes ago, loukash said:

Try https://markzware.com/products/idmarkz. Even the free version is useful for QuickLook, thumbnail preview and some basic content statistics.

Oh I don't need to convert them, I have a VMWare Snow Leopard system set up with my last CS version configured for my legacy workflows. More that I was wondering if the reason my .psd documents show up is because Sketchbook Pro has registered that it can handle them, and whether Affinity apps are missing some step to make their documents known to Spotlight for the Documents category.

[Oufti]

1 hour ago, mattspace said:

I was wondering […] whether Affinity apps are missing some step to make their documents known to Spotlight for the Documents category.

It looks like something like that happens.

However, since I installed Affinity v.2.6.2 (on Monterey), I'm for the 1st time able to see a list of recent files when I option-click on the Publisher app icon in macOS Dock. It's a pleasant surprise… 

[Pšenda]

18 hours ago, nickbatz said:

(And I don't know what the locked file is - possibly a recovery file.)

[R C-R]

9 hours ago, mattspace said:

No, I'm talking about the Recent category in the Finder Favourites, which is in the sidebar, and also directly in the Go menu.

I turned off "Recents" in the sidebar many years ago because it only showed certain document types & also among the dozens & dozens of files it listed it showed certain files that I had not touched for years. 

That said, I am running Catalina & on the Apple Menu there is a Recent Items item that shows the last several Affinity files I have worked on, among others.

[mattspace]

44 minutes ago, Oufti said:

It looks like something like that happens.

However, since I installed Affinity v.2.6.2 (on Monterey), I'm for the 1st time able to see a list of recent files when I option-click on the Publisher app icon in macOS Dock. It's a pleasant surprise… 

Hmm interesting, right clicking on dock icons to get recent files isn't something I use, but on Ventura I see Publisher and Photo showing previous files, and they're both 2.6.0 still.

[mattspace]

Just now, R C-R said:

I turned off "Recents" in the sidebar many years ago because it only showed certain document types & also among the dozens & dozens of files it listed it showed certain files that I had not touched for years. 

That said, I am running Catalina & on the Apple Menu there is a Recent Items item that shows the last several Affinity files I have worked on, among others.

Oh yeah, THOSE recent items work fine, the issue is more that if I want a gestalt of recent files in a single finder window, trying to create your own search query based on modification dates etc. tends to pull in a bunch of xml files from ~/Library for every preference that's been updated etc.

[R C-R]

52 minutes ago, Oufti said:

However, since I installed Affinity v.2.6.2 (on Monterey), I'm for the 1st time able to see a list of recent files when I option-click on the Publisher app icon in macOS Dock.

For me, this popup list of recents in all V2 versions is sometimes cleared after I quit & relaunch the apps, or even just after some variable interval if I close the app but leave it running. This has been reported before & apparently it is somehow 'by design.' V1 does not have this problem -- there is always a popup list of the most recents, even though I rarely run any of them.

[Oufti]

Up to now, I've always only relied upon the Open recent… item in Affinity File menu. 

[loukash]

7 hours ago, mattspace said:

I don't need to convert them

I do neither. IDMarkz Free is only my QuickLook aggregator in Finder on Ventura.

7 hours ago, mattspace said:

the reason my .psd documents show up

Because MacOS knows PSD as "Image" type by default, and Preview can also partially read them when saved in the "compatibility" mode. That's been the case since the early days of OS X.

[mattspace]

2 minutes ago, loukash said:

I do neither. IDMarkz Free is only my QuickLook aggregator in Finder on Ventura.

Does having it installed cause Publisher documents to be collected by spotlight / finder file search as "Documents"? Because, that's the goal.

 

[loukash]

7 hours ago, mattspace said:

I have a VMWare Snow Leopard system set up with my last CS version configured for my legacy workflows.

Interesting!

Just recently I've discovered https://mac.getutm.app and created an El Capitan emulation to run Acrobat X and iView/Expression Media, but emulation in UTM is pretty slow on Apple silicon. Running my old MacBook with El Capitan headlessly via Screen Sharing is way faster.

[loukash]

Just now, mattspace said:

Does having it installed cause Publisher documents to be collected by spotlight / finder file search as "Documents"? Because, that's the goal.

Not that I'm aware of.

But frankly, I've never cared much about Apple's "smart" folders, searches and "recent items". Spotlight is often a hit or miss.
When I really want to find something, I'm using https://findanyfile.app.
Also, I'm maintaining NeoFinder catalogs of many local folders (in addition to external disks etc). NeoFinder has become quite a powerful DAM in the meantime.
Else, I'm relying on my decades old systematic folder structure in the Documents folder. Some folders are over 30 years old, just moving from Mac to Mac…  

[nickbatz]

4 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Aha. Interesting that the hidden file shows up in the search dialog. I don't think they do usually. (Normally you toggle hidden files being visible with command-shift period.)

 

18 minutes ago, loukash said:

IDMarkz Free is only my QuickLook aggregator in Finder on Ventura.

I'm curious - what does a QuickLook aggregator do?

And you're not saying that QuickLook isn't working with Affinity Photo files on your Mac, right?

[mattspace]

15 minutes ago, loukash said:

Not that I'm aware of.

But frankly, I've never cared much about Apple's "smart" folders, searches and "recent items". Spotlight is often a hit or miss.

Ahh see I have a lot of workflows based on smart folders - My entire podcast subscription workflow works by using a podcatcher that downloads from RSS, then I have Smart Folders creating the equivalent of playlists in Finder to manually copy files over to iOS devices etc.

I do a similar thing for Finder-based DAM for my photo library:

[loukash]

20 minutes ago, nickbatz said:

what does a QuickLook aggregator do?

It generates a QuickLook preview of files in Finder. Many apps have one built in, and sometimes it works even when the app is in the trial mode, like IDMarkz. For instance, I also have a demo version of BetterZip which I use only to quick-look Zip archive contents. This can be managed via System Setting → Privacy Security → Extensions → QuickLook. There are apps available that are meant to be used mainly for QuickLook; for example I have here Syntax Highlight, QLMarkdown, QuickLook Video, Apparency.

There used to be quite a large selection of standalone QL plugins (that would go into ~/Library/QuickLook) available online, but sadly, dozens of them haven't been updated in years or even decades. From my collection, only a handful still works on Ventura.