Settings Not Saving Fix

Settings Not Saving: Fix

Affinity apps sometimes fail to save settings correctly under Wine. This page covers three methods to fix that, from most to least recommended.

Each method targets the same location inside your WINEPREFIX: drive_c/users/$USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/Affinity/.

Method 1: AffinityPluginLoader (recommended)

Install AffinityPluginLoader + WineFix, a community plugin by Noah C3. It is not official, but it greatly improves runtime stability, and fixes the "Preferences not saving" issue on Linux.

WineFix provides plugin loading and dynamic patch injection through the Harmony library. It restores on-the-fly settings saving under Wine.

Installation

Replace paths dynamically. These commands adapt to your prefix and Affinity directory automatically.

# Define Wine prefix
export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.affinity"
cd "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program Files/Affinity/Affinity/"

# 1.) Download & extract AffinityPluginLoader + WineFix bundle
curl -L -o /tmp/affinitypluginloader-plus-winefix.tar.xz \
  https://github.com/noahc3/AffinityPluginLoader/releases/latest/download/affinitypluginloader-plus-winefix.tar.xz

tar -xf /tmp/affinitypluginloader-plus-winefix.tar.xz -C .

# 2.) Replace launcher for compatibility
mv "Affinity.exe" "Affinity.real.exe"
mv "AffinityHook.exe" "Affinity.exe"

Your existing launchers still work: wine .../Affinity.exe now automatically loads AffinityPluginLoader and WineFix.

Verify

Run Affinity as before:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.affinity" wine "$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/Program Files/Affinity/Affinity/Affinity.exe"

• You should now see Affinity Plugin Loader output in your terminal log on startup.
• Preferences and settings should now save correctly on Linux.

Note

• Updates to Affinity may overwrite Affinity.exe. If that happens, re-extract the affinitypluginloader-plus-winefix.tar.xz bundle.
• Always download from Noah C3's official GitHub releases.
• For the Canva sign-in dialog specifically, see Related Projects: LoginFix rather than relying on WineFix to work around it.

Method 2: Copy settings from this repository (Lutris/EW install)

This method is tested and working for the recommended Lutris/ElementalWarrior install.

1. Clone the repository and move into the source directory.

   git clone git@github.com:seapear/AffinityOnLinux.git
   cd AffinityOnLinux/Auxiliary/Settings/

2. For each app, run the following, replacing $APP with the target Affinity application's name and $USERNAME with your username.

   mv $APP/2.0/Settings drive_c/users/$USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/Affinity/

Method 3: Copy settings from a Windows machine

1. Locate the settings folders on a Windows machine.
2. Copy them into the corresponding location inside your WINEPREFIX.

For example:

C:\Users\$USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\2.0\Settings\  ->  drive_c/users/$USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/Affinity/Designer/2.0/

C:\Users\$USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Photo\2.0\Settings\  ->  drive_c/users/$USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/Affinity/Photo/2.0/

C:\Users\$USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Publisher\2.0\Settings\  ->  drive_c/users/$USERNAME/AppData/Roaming/Affinity/Publisher/2.0/

Editing the settings files

The settings files use the .xml format. You can edit them with any text editor.

Troubleshooting

If settings still don't persist after applying Method 1, confirm you see the Affinity Plugin Loader log output on startup. If you don't see it, the launcher swap in the installation steps above did not take effect, most likely because Affinity was updated and overwrote Affinity.exe. Re-extract the bundle and repeat the launcher swap.

Known Issues

See General Known Issues for issues affecting Affinity on Linux more broadly.