So, for example, when you’re working with text you’ll see the most common tool options in the top tool bar but most of the options are only visible when you click to the text tool button on the right side context toolbar. On the right side is a vertical stack called the context toolbar represented by icons that allow for the full range of options you need for whatever tool might be selected. As you would expect, as you change tools the top toolbar changes to reflect the options associated with the selected tool. The usual tools one expects to have with this kind of app are on the left toolbar. I’ve also been using it for all my single page documents as it has linked text boxes and text wrap, two features not found in Affinity Designer which is what I would have used for single page designs previously. Newsletters, reports, brochures, magazines or anything of that sort. Where Publisher really shines is in multi page documents and it has not disappointed in that role. It was a solid foundation offering excellent performance and a well rounded feature set.

The foundation of Publisher was put down in 2019 with the desktop version of the app. Being able to work with touch, Pencil and trackpad is a real pleasure. And to be clear, it’s not just usable, it’s smooth and responsive on the M1 iPad, 8GB of memory. In general the app has been very stable and usable in my four months of use. Technically Stage Manager isn’t supported at all but I’ve found the app works fine with Stage Manager turned on. For now using the app on an external display is useless because the the right side context toolbar disappears anytime a tool is changed using the left side toolbar.

The third really isn’t a bug at all because it’s specifically a problem related to using the app on an external display which Serif have said is not yet a supported feature. Second, sometimes the app stops taking input from an external keyboard, restarting the app fixes the issue. The first, some fonts show up in Chinese characters instead of being displayed in English.

In my experience there have been just three bugs that have been a bit of a bother. Serif have released 4 small bug fixes but most of the larger bugs have yet to be fixed. It’s now been four months and I thought I’d offer an update. At the time I’d only had a week to work with it but was happy with the app.

Back in November I published a mini-review of Affinity Publisher for iPad.

Serif affinity photo 2021