Updated Affinity Photo to 1.7.0 – all my main settings reset (hotkeys, layout etc.)

[danmerey]

Hey, I just updated Affinity Photo from 1.6.5.135 to 1.7 (downloaded installer and updated old version). I thought all my settings will persist after update, but no – all my settings reset, so now I have to restore my layout settings, hotkeys and maybe some other things. At least Favorite Fonts and Custom Brushes didn't reset.

So, tell my is that so? Is that a bug? Is it intended behaviour (I hope, not)? If yes and it's because old settings and not compatible, why wouldn't you do migration from old ones to new, is that so hard? Is there a way to restore my old settings at this point without manually changing every thing?

[R C-R]

Do you really mean you had a 1.5.x version installed or is that a typo? The 1.5.x versions are really old, long since superseded by the 1.6.x versions.

[danmerey]

56 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Do you really mean you had a 1.5.x version installed or is that a typo? The 1.5.x versions are really old, long since superseded by the 1.6.x versions.

Yes, you are right, I had version 1.6.5.135, fixed that in my post

[Aammppaa]

@danmerey I had the same experience, sadly.

[Andreas Schrader]

Same here!

In addition, all my custom swatches are gone.

[jmwellborn]

Very odd.  I updated both Photo and Designer today — both purchased through the Affinity store — and everything (brushes, assets, swatches, styles, palettes) came through with flying colors.   I had a little adjusting to do with Photo’s toolbar, but other than that both apps were up and running in no time.    Mac OS Sierra.

[SalfingerAndrew]

Only my UI reset when updating still have all other settings the same.

[R C-R]

For me, both Designer & Photo came from the Mac App Store so I updated them from there. For both apps, the layout of the main toolbar was changed but not reset to the default. Some of the items I had added were replaced with different ones or removed completely, while a few others were moved to different positions.

The layout of the Studio panels also changed. In both apps I originally had set the Layers panel to float & in both that was reset to somewhere in the Right Studio. The vertical sizes of many items in the Right Studio changed & in Photo, where I had placed the Macros & Library panels in the Left Studio, the Library panel was removed.

Thankfully, the Tools panel layout did not change, nor did I lose any brushes, swatches or styles.

[Callum]

Hi all,

Unfortunately this is something we are aware of and are unable to fix right now so at the moment as far as I'm aware there is no way to retrieve your old preferences settings/shortcuts. I will let you know if this changes.

Thanks

Callum

[R C-R]

42 minutes ago, Callum said:

Unfortunately this is something we are aware of and are unable to fix right now so at the moment as far as I'm aware there is no way to retrieve your old preferences settings/shortcuts. I will let you know if this changes.

Do you mean the original preferences, keyboard shortcuts, etc. from the retail 1.6.x versions, or from the 1.7.x customer betas?

I ask because at least for me, the only retail version preferences that got clobbered were those relating to the layout of the UI.

[Callum]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Do you mean the original preferences, keyboard shortcuts, etc. from the retail 1.6.x versions, or from the 1.7.x customer betas?

I ask because at least for me, the only retail version preferences that got clobbered were those relating to the layout of the UI.

This only refers to retail versions. Some people are reporting losing shortcuts some aren't I'm not sure why just yet, hopefully I will have more information soon.

[danmerey]

52 minutes ago, Callum said:

Hi all,

Unfortunately this is something we are aware of and are unable to fix right now so at the moment as far as I'm aware there is no way to retrieve your old preferences settings/shortcuts. I will let you know if this changes.

Thanks

Callum

Thanks for the response.

You should definitely fix that in a new version, because default layout is bad IMHO, and I managed to restore my old one fast only thanks to my recorded videos of my work for my devlog.

Also I had to restore my shortcut settings for Brush Tool, Pixel Tool, Select Tool, Erase Tool (I remove all duplicated shortcuts, so it doesn't change Tool Subtype on several presses)

All other settings remain, but those that I lost was the most important anyway, so consider fix that in future versions please

[Andreas Schrader]

I have a TimeMachine Backup of my Data. I tried to restore /Users/<me>/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/ and launch the previous version to do screen shots or export the setting. But restoring this folder did not help.

Can you please tell me which folders I need to restore to see the setting in the old version again?

This is a major problem for me. I adopted everything in Designer (and Photo) over the last months but now I can’t tell you what I all did to make Designer feel so good.

All I know that I need to restore ASAP in order to get back to work.

[R C-R]

24 minutes ago, Andreas Schrader said:

Can you please tell me which folders I need to restore to see the setting in the old version again?

Unfortunately, at least for now I don't think there are any folders you can use that will do this. From what I can tell, some of the Containers folder items from the old 1.6 versions are not 100% compatible with the 1.7 versions, so just like when the 1.7 update is launched for the first time, they would be replaced or altered with versions that are fully compatible with 1.7.

I think this is done to eliminate potential incompatibilities that would destabilize the app, causing crashes or odd behaviors (much like when some of those items become corrupted & have to be reset by starting the app with the Control key held down), so there is likely to be no easy fix for this. 

[Andreas Schrader]

On 6/6/2019 at 1:25 PM, R C-R said:

Unfortunately, at least for now I don't think there are any folders you can use that will do this. From what I can tell, some of the Containers folder items from the old 1.6 versions are not 100% compatible with the 1.7 versions, so just like when the 1.7 update is launched for the first time, they would be replaced or altered with versions that are fully compatible with 1.7.

 I think this is done to eliminate potential incompatibilities that would destabilize the app, causing crashes or odd behaviors (much like when some of those items become corrupted & have to be reset by starting the app with the Control key held down), so there is likely to be no easy fix for this. 

Hello R C-R,

maybe you got me wrong. I want to restore the prefs and use the old version to note down what I all changed. I bought Designer in the Apple Store, so the latest version available for me is 1.6.1 (apart from 1.7 of course).

So my question is, what folders and files do I need to restore to get all my prefs and settings back to my previous setup for version 1.6.1?

[R C-R]

42 minutes ago, Andreas Schrader said:

So my question is, what folders and files do I need to restore to get all my prefs and settings back to my previous setup for version 1.6.1?

As already mentioned, the per user /Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/ folder contains all the per user prefs and settings files. Note that this is in the normally hidden Library folder in your user account home folder, not anything in the top level Library folder.

So minimally you would need to restore that folder to that location from a TM backup made before updating to 1.7 and restore the 1.6.1 version of the application from a TM backup, overwriting the newer one. (I don't think any 1.6.x versions are available from the Mac App Store anymore.) It might also be a good idea to reboot your Mac into Safe mode & then reboot normally once that finishes, which should clear out all caches.

If that doesn't work, I don't know what else to tell you.

[Bri-Toon]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

So minimally you would need to restore that folder to that location from a TM backup made before updating to 1.7

Dang it. I wish I knew this earlier. I was following your steps because I too am looking into doing something similar. Before I updated, I backed up brushes and styles, and it looks like the shortcut keys backed up automatically when I updated, but I didn't know how to backup text. I knew that there was a folder location somewhere, but I didn't know where. Now, I went into that location, and I see only one file called Container.plist. That must be because the update refreshed the folder?