How to disable the Welcome Screen (Welcome Dialogue) in Affinity Studio?

Quote from Lefthandbass59

Does anyone know how to do the same thing on MacOS?

Terminal:

defaults write com.canva.affinity "com.canva.affinity.ShowNewDocumentOnStartUp" 0

To reset:

defaults delete com.canva.affinity "com.canva.affinity.ShowNewDocumentOnStartUp"

Thanks, Geoff.

That was surprisingly easy to find! If anyone else needs it:

On Mac, open the Terminal app and paste:

defaults write com.canva.affinity "com.canva.affinity.ShowNewDocumentOnStartUp" 0

Then press Enter.

for Mac only

This really puzzles me. The only time I see the "welcome screen" is when I start the application and there is no open document(s) reopening. So I would obviously want to make a new document, or open an existing document. So the Welcome screen is actually a useful thing to have there. I really don't see why I would want to look at nothing and then have to call up the open dialog or the new dialog.

It just really puzzles me about what the actual (deal breaking(?)) problem is (again on Mac only).

Quote from Old Bruce

It just really puzzles me about what the actual (deal breaking(?)) problem is (again on Mac only).

It's not a "problem" as such... it's just that it's usual for Welcome screens like that to have a "don't show this again" tickbox to turn them off.
I will almost always want to open a file after I start the program as my start point will be a Raw photo that I've taken with my camera, so I can just do that from the Welcome screen. However, I'd prefer to start with a blank screen and open the file from the menu like I do with most of my other apps. It's just a personal preference though.

Fair enough Lefthandbass59.

Quote from loukash

Terminal:

Sorry - I seem to have missed your post. I see that the Discord post I found was from you too - so thank you twice!

Quote from Lefthandbass59

It's not a "problem" as such... it's just that it's usual for Welcome screens like that to have a "don't show this again" tickbox to turn them off.

For what very little it is worth, although the window says "Welcome" at the top left (with your user name below it & some options available if you click on that) the name of the window is not "Welcome."

Just hover the pointer over the big Affinity A button at the top left of the toolbar & a tooltip will pop up identifying it as "Home." So it is not just welcoming you to the app, it is where everything starts when you launch it, IOW, the app's home screen.

Someone (I forget who) pointed out that the Welcome Screen shows your recent documents. As they were involved in demoing Affinity to 3rd parties they did not want others to see these during the demo.

Yes... so some people like the startup screen and others don't... which is why the ideal option is a tick box to choose whether you want it or not.

This is the startup screen from Pixelmator Pro, which is very similar and has the tick box.

Affinity V2 also had that option to not show the welcome/home screen as a checkbox on that screen. It was less functional, though, mostly showed news and purchased items. As long as the config file method works, I am fine with it.

Quote from voom

Affinity V2 also had that option to not show the welcome/home screen as a checkbox on that screen.

So it did! I turned that off so long ago that I'd forgotten it was originally displayed at start-up!

Quote from Geoffoote

I found this solution in the ask-the-community section of Discord.
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Affinity\3.0\Settings\Application.xml
Then change this line to False
<ShowNewDocumentDialog>True</ShowNewDocumentDialog>

I tried it & it worked! I took the precaution of making a backup of the xml file first. Now no more annoying Welcome Screen!

Nevertheless, there is no way around having a selection option. This is because after every update, you will probably have to change the entry in the XML file again.

The last update did not break that setting