These updates are free to anyone who already owns V2. You should automatically be prompted to update to the latest version of the software when opening your app, but if you’re having issues, please check out this article . For new customers, or those wishing to upgrade from V1 to V2, check out our purchase options . Want to have your voice heard before the next update? Join our beta program ! Affinity Publisher now has the ability to define custom text variables as fields. This allows you to add new fields and assign whatever value to them you wish. Within the Fields Panel, you will now see a new section for ‘Custom’. Within that there is a + button where you can add your own fields into your document, so any references to the price, name and date are drawn from the field values. For example, this means when the price and product name are confirmed, you can just update the field value and every instance of that will be updated throughout your document.

Shift + number key now changes flow percentage (in the same way that number key on its own adjusts opacity)

Shift + square brackets now changes hardness in 10% increments

Number key in Paint Mixer and Smudge Brush now adjusts strength percentage

Fill with Primary colour has now been set with a default shortcut of Alt / ⌥ + Backspace

Fill with Secondary colour has now been set with a default shortcut of Ctrl / ⌘ + Backspace

An updated list of core brush shortcuts are shown below (those highlighted in red are the new additions): Windows: Number keys (e.g. 0 =100%, 3 =30%, 6 and 5 in quick succession=65%). For most brush tools this sets opacity, for smudge and paint mixer this sets strength macOS & iPad: Number keys (e.g. 0 =100%, 3 =30%, 6 and 5 in quick succession=65%). For most brush tools this sets opacity, for smudge and paint mixer this sets strength Windows: Ctrl + Alt . Click-drag to adjust, single click to cycle between Width / Hardness, Shape / Spacing and Rotation macOS & iPad: Ctrl + ⌥ . Click-drag to adjust, single click to cycle between Width / Hardness, Shape / Spacing and Rotation

Select the cross-reference‘s target, which can be an existing anchor, paragraph or index marker

Specify the text to be displayed by the cross-reference

Optionally, apply formatting and limit the amount of quoted text displayed by any field you‘ve inserted into the display text.

Selecting a target

Use the upper part of the dialog to select a target. Choose the target‘s type (Anchor, Paragraph, or Index Marker) and then select the required target in the list below. If too many targets are listed, use the Filter text and Filter style options to limit what‘s listed based on target text and/or paragraph style.

Specifying what a cross-reference displays

The Text option specifies what your cross-reference will display. This can be a simple attribute of the target, such as its page number or quoted text, or you can enter complete phrasing into the box, e.g. ‘For further information, see 'Deciduous varieties' on page 264’. Click the downward-pointing arrow at the field‘s upper-left corner to insert an attribute of the target or a commonly used special character.

Using presets

Phrases can be saved as presets for use across all your documents. Presets also ensure your cross-references adhere to a publication‘s style guides. Fields in cross-references are automatically hyperlinked to their target when you export to PDF.

Limiting quoted text

Character style and other formatting options in the lower part of the dialog become available when the insertion point is immediately before or after a field, or when a text selection encompasses a field. (If more than one field is selected, the formatting options affect only the first one.) The Page Number, Above/Below and List/Note Number fields display the corresponding attribute‘s value in full. All other fields display text that might be lengthy, such as a full paragraph. Use the ‘Limit displayed length’ option to restrict them to a sensible amount of text. Quoted text can be limited to a number of words or the first instance of an ‘end character’, whichever occurs first. You can also choose whether to include an ellipsis or encountered end character in your cross-reference.

More about the Cross-References Panel

When you insert a cross-reference to a paragraph, Affinity Publisher creates an anchor at the paragraph’s start and uses that as the target. You can rename the anchor, if you wish, via the Anchors Panel. The Source Spread option allows you to narrow the scope of cross-references listed on the panel, e.g. to the current spread or a specific spread. With the insertion point at a cross-reference or target in document text, options at the foot of the panel allow you to instantly focus the document view on its counterpart. Finally, changes to a document may result in out-of-date values in cross-references. For example, changing pagination, section names, or paragraph text at a target. The foot of the panel also includes options to update them individually or all at once. In Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher, you can now choose to toggle your view to hide all layer effects or switch to greyscale. Being able to hide layer effects in this way is particularly important for those creating very complex designs with thousands of layers and effects – having a view mode where effects can be turned off greatly improves performance as you work. Toggling to greyscale mode can also be useful to evaluate contrast and dynamic range more easily. On desktop, you will find these new options in the View Mode options, and on iPad you can toggle them using the buttons next to the View Mode options in the navigator. Additionally, on desktop we have created new buttons you can optionally add to your toolbar to make it more convenient for those who want to toggle between these views regularly. You can find these by right clicking on top toolbar and selecting “Customise Toolbar” and drag either of them on where you see fit. Holding onto any tool shortcut will now just put you in that tool temporarily until you release the shortcut key, at which point you will return to your previous tool. So for example, when you are using the Pen Tool, you could hold V to change to Move Tool to move your curve, and then on release be immediately back in Pen Tool. Another useful example would be when in Brush Tool, you could hold E to put you in Eraser and release to toggle back to Brush Tool. Time Zone: short time zone ID,
Time Zone: long time zone ID,
Time Zone: time zone exemplar city,
Time Zone: generic location Pattern: Example output: gblon
Europe/London
London
United Kingdom Time Notes: Previously, Publisher only gave options to open document file types from File -> Open. There have been a number of requests to extend this to allow image files to be opened in that dialog, especially for those who now directly edit images and other graphics work using the StudioLink functionality in Publisher, so this has now been added. There is now a new option to go to your previously viewed spread in Affinity Publisher. So, for example, if you are on page 30 and then go to page 400 to edit something, clicking on ‘Previously Viewed Spread’ in the Document menu will jump you back to page 30 (and hitting again will jump back to page 400 – so you can switch between the two pages quickly). You can also set a keyboard shortcut for this using the new button with the rest of the page navigation options in the bottom left of the UI. In addition to being able to customise the words that precede cross-references within an index, six new options are available: After Topic , Between Items , Between Ranges , Before References , After References , and After See (Also) .

Inserting special characters

Commonly used special characters are easily inserted into your custom separator text. On desktop, click the arrow at the left of the box. On iPad, tap the Insert icon at the top left of the on-screen keyboard. Special characters can also be inserted using your operating system's feature for typing emoji and symbols, or by copying and pasting. In any of the shape tools, picture frame tools and artboard tools, you can now Ctrl +click (Windows) / ⌘ +click (macOS) to bring up a dialog to manually specify the size and other properties of the object you want to create. The new object will be created in the position that you clicked, and you have the option in the dialog to change whether that position relates to a specific corner, side or the centre of the shape being created. Each tool will remember the settings of the last time you created that shape.

When the dialog is up, you can commit by clicking OK , hitting Return / Enter or clicking anywhere else on the document

You can cancel by clicking Cancel or hitting Esc

You can click-drag on any of the labels in these dialogs to change the values (so here you could click-drag on the ‘Width:’ label for example)

Hover + mouse roll over the values also changes them (along with Shift or Alt modifiers to increase / decrease steps made by a factor of 10)

If you create a shape by dragging it out on your document, that will also set the W+H for the next time you Ctrl / ⌘ + click.

You will get a live preview of your result as you are adjusting any of the values. You can choose to cancel the operation with the Cancel button (or Esc ), commit with the OK button (or Return / Enter ) or simply click off the dialog. The dialog will remember its previous values the next time you bring it up, meaning you can move multiple objects one by one by the same amount (for example, in a case where items are on different spreads / artboards or in other cases where achieving a multiple selection of them to begin with is difficult). A Reset button is also available to quickly zero all the values in the dialogs to start from scratch. As well as manually typing the values in, you can also change them by click-drag on any of the labels or by using the mouse roller when hovering over any of the input boxes. The right-click menu available when in Node Tool (or while holding ⌘ / Ctrl in Pen Tool) now has the additional option of deleting the node. Both delete methods (standard delete or ‘Fit to Curve’ delete) are available from this menu. The ‘Fit to Curve’ option gives you the same result as pressing Alt / ⌥ + Delete .

Favourite fonts – any fonts you mark as favourite (heart icon in fonts list) will now be shown in your favourite list in all apps

Grid presets – any grid presets you save will now sync

You can now include URLs, file locations, email addresses and anchors in your data merge dataset and use those fields to create an active link in your merged result. You can then set up a data merge layout using those fields, and once you’ve done that, you can select the <Twitter Handle> field and ‘Insert Hyperlink’. When you insert a hyperlink in a data merge document, you will get an additional option to take the URL from a data merge field, which will activate a drop-down to select which field you want the URL to come from. You can also do the same with a link type of email and set that to = the <email address> field. Then when you generate the merged result, the hyperlinks will dynamically generate to be correct for the record in question. iPad versions of all apps now have the preferences available on desktop versions to set the decimal place precision of different unit types. We expect these preferences to be reflected in all areas of the UI; for example, if you set mm to be three decimal places, then in the Transform Panel, sliders and all other controls, you should now see any values in mm to three decimal places. This should also be shown when you go to edit any values using the single tap - calculator on any field. Our first major update for Version 2 includes many usability enhancements to guides, layers, assets, warping, strokes, text and brushes, as well as some all-new features such as a Vector Flood Fill Tool in Affinity Designer and running headers in Affinity Publisher. Read all about these and the hundreds of other improvements across all apps and platforms below. Dashed lines can now be set to be ‘balanced’, meaning the pattern is automatically rescaled between any cusps in a curve. This gives a more desirable result for things such as corners of a box, or the start and end of a stroke. You can toggle balanced dashed lines on and off using the new button in the Stroke Panel.

Select all the items you want the tool to consider

Switch to Vector Flood Fill Tool – this will analyse your selection and work out all the areas available to fill

Choose your fill colour – select what colour you wish to fill your areas with from the Colour or Swatch Panel

Click in any of the available areas to fill with your chosen colours

The other great thing with this tool is it allows for the simple creation of bitmap fill textures too – you can create a texture fill from any asset or stock item just by clicking on it. You can also choose to layer a texture fill on top of a colour fill with the options available in the context toolbar. Other tips when using this tool:

If you don’t have any objects pre-selected you can just use the tool to fill any existing closed shape. It’s a way to quickly change the colour of objects without having to select them first.

While in the tool, if you wish to change your selection, you can hold ⌘ Command (macOS / iPad) or Ctrl (Windows) and click / drag marquee to select other objects.

For an area to be recognised, any curves in your selection need to fully intersect, so it can sometimes be beneficial to expand strokes to bridge gaps in paths before using the tool.

There are lots of options available when using this tool. For more information, check out this tutorial . Running headers are a great way to easily include the name of the current topic of your document in the header or footer of your page. The way it works is by copying text formatted with a particular paragraph or character style on a page into a special running header field. For example, let’s say your file uses a paragraph style of “Heading 1” for the title of each new section in your document. You could add a running header field to the top of every page (normally by adding to your master page), and that field will automatically show your section name, dynamically changing if you edit any of your titles in the document. The really useful element of this feature is that if there isn’t a new title anywhere on a page, the header will automatically ‘run’ from the previous page and will continue to do so until a new title is found, as shown below: All Affinity apps now have the ability to disable the Move Tool auto-selecting objects when you click on them (this option was previously only available in Affinity Photo). This can be very useful when you want to make sure you do not accidentally select a different object from the one you are working on. Having auto-select turned off means you can also drag anywhere on your document to move your selection, getting your cursor (or finger on iPad!) out of the way. The auto-select toggle is available from the context toolbar when in the Move Tool. Additionally, when auto-select is turned on, you can also choose how you want selections to be made from the drop-down:

Default – clicking on any objects or groups will select them

Objects / Layers – ignores any groups and automatically drills to select any child object you click on

Group – only selects groups, will ignore any objects not part of a group

Under (iPad only) – if you have multiple objects stacked on top of each other, each tap will cycle through the z-order of the layer stack, allowing you to select items underneath the top item (this can also be achieved by holding Alt or ⌥ ).

Keyboard shortcuts have now been added so you can easily change the blend mode of the current layer(s), or the current brush if using the Paint Brush Tool. Holding Shift with + or - will go to the next or previous blend mode in the list. Additionally, you can use any of the shortcuts in the accompanying table to change immediately to a specific blend mode. As well as assigning shortcuts to other blend modes (where a default shortcut hasn't been given), these can be customised within Settings.

Crop to selection – if you have a pixel selection active, the Crop Tool will now initiate to be a minimum fit around the selection you have

Maintain zoom level – after a crop, the current zoom level will be maintained (rather than automatically zooming to fit)

Easily apply same ratio crop – the Crop Tool now remembers the last setting globally, so if you wish to apply the same ratio crop to a number of images, it‘s much easier

Resize a crop by dragging anywhere on the bounding box edges, rather than having to drag from a handle

Reset the current crop with Esc

In unconstrained mode, holding Shift will now constrain the current aspect ratio and ⌘ Command ( Ctrl on Windows) will resize around the centre

When moving a guide by dragging you now see both the guide position relative to the ruler origin (as before) as well as the distance from the guide’s previous position. This means, for example, if you want to move a guide 10mm you can achieve that easily without changing the ruler origin.

When dragging a guide, holding Shift will now snap the guide position to ruler marks. Additionally holding Shift and Alt / ⌥ Option together will snap to the delta distance.

If you hold Alt / ⌥ Option before dragging a guide, that will now create a copy of the guide.

Dragging a new guide from rulers will now automatically turn guide visibility on (if it was set off).

Alt / ⌥ Option-clicking on a guide will delete the guide.

Double-clicking on an existing guide will now open the guide manager dialog (with the focus on the guide you double-clicked).

Brush Panel now always highlights the current raster brush (in blue) and will now denote if the brush has been edited (by highlighting red).

If you change brush tools (e.g., between paint brush and eraser) which have different brushes assigned, the panel will automatically scroll / switch category to always show the current brush. This is something which can be optionally switched off (‘Auto-Scroll’ in the panel’s burger menu).

If you have changed any of the temporary properties of a brush, you can choose to update your brush preset to use that setting (from right click menu on desktop, left swipe menu on iPad).

In Affinity Designer we have now made it possible to view your vector brushes in thumbnail view (Brush Panel burger menu -> uncheck ‘Show as list’). This was previously only available as an option with raster brushes.

Additionally, in the desktop versions you can now:

Choose to show brush names in the panel (option in burger menu). The iPad versions already showed brush names in prior versions.

Alt / ⌥ Option-drag a brush to quickly create a duplicate of the brush in the panel.

We have now added both the perspective and mesh warp live filters from Affinity Photo into the Pixel Persona of Affinity Designer. You can add one of these live filters from the Layer menu in Pixel Persona on desktop, or from the + button in the Layers Panel on iPad (again only when you are in Pixel Persona). These filters are completely non-destructive, and particularly useful for distorting images and embedded documents you want to incorporate within your design. Note : These are pixel-based warps so will rasterise any vector data warped by them at export time. If you just wish to warp vector outlines, you should be using the vector warp group functionality in the Designer Persona (added as a new feature to V2) which will always maintain a true vector result. You can now re-order subcategories within the Asset Panel by drag and drop (as well as using the burger menu on the subcategory to move up and move down as before). Additionally, there are new options in the burger menu of ‘Expand All’ and ‘Collapse All’ to quickly expand or collapse all subcategories in the panel. As has been frequently requested, we have promoted the opacity and blend mode options that were previously only available from the Layer options (…) panel, at the top of the main Layers Panel. Double-tapping on opacity will reset the value to 100%, and double-tapping on blend mode will reset to ‘Normal’. Changes have been made to the ‘Edit…’ menu on iPad to make the menu more functional and readable (especially on documents with light coloured backgrounds). The biggest change is that we’ve brought back the icons for the isometric (Affinity Designer, when working on an iso grid) and insertion target options we had in V1.

In the context toolbar, you can see whether the tool is currently loaded with a style or not. If you wish to unload the tool, you can tap the Delete button in the context toolbar.

When the picker is unloaded you can load it with a style from any object / text in your document with a single tap.

Alternatively, when it is unloaded you can drag on the screen which will give you a loupe similar to the colour picker to more accurately choose the style you want to pick.

Once a style is loaded, you can then tap other objects or marquee around them to apply that style to other objects.

In the case of applying the style to text, you can single tap to apply that style to a single word, or click drag to highlight sections of text you wish to apply the style to.

To quickly reload with a new style, you can Alt / ⌥ Option-tap to copy a style from a different shape to the picker.

From the Style Picker menu in the toolbar, you also get access to the additional options available on desktop to select which attributes you want the Style Picker to copy.

Shift – this will add the selected object type to your current selection

⌥ Option – this will subtract the selected object type from your current selection

Shift ⌥ Option – this will just select any of the selected object types from within your current selection

You can either use the Command Controller or a connected keyboard to access these modifiers.

Ability to add horizontal or vertical guides quickly by dragging out from either of the rulers.

Drag to change the ruler / page origin. This can be done by dragging from where the horizontal and vertical rulers meet in the top left corner. This will snap to other objects, guides, grids, etc (obeying your current snapping options). You can reset the origin by double-tapping in the same place.

All of the new guide improvements are also available on iPad, including Alt / ⌥ Option-drag to duplicate, Alt / ⌥ Option-tap to delete, etc.

Develop RAW files non-destructively and choose to embed into a document file or link externally. Tip: if you have a Universal Licence and own Publisher 2, you can use StudioLink to place RAW files into your documents and edit the development settings at any time (something no other publishing app offers!). Combine separate Publisher documents as chapters to create one long publication, automatically synching page numbers, table of contents, indexes and styles throughout – an especially useful feature for collaboration, as contributors can work on their own sections individually before bringing it all together.

Clearer drop zones for dropping inside, masking and reordering

New parent bar to easily collapse groups and drop layers above or below their current parent

New quick menu (right click on visibility icon) for colour tagging

Option to show/hide other layers

Drag across multiple layers’ visibility at once to instantly show/hide those layers

Drag FX icon to copy layer effects to other layers (or drag to trash)

Ability to lock layers without selecting first

New option to show icons denoting layer type (pixel, image, text, curve, etc)

All major content types, including Assets, Brushes, Swatches and Styles are now linked between Affinity apps on your device. This means if you create a new brush in Affinity Photo, this will become instantly available to you in the Pixel Persona of Designer and the Photo Persona of Publisher. Or if you drag a new asset into one of your asset categories, again that will be available across all three apps. You can easily control whether or not you want any of your content categories linked, too. Ready to dive into a new creative era? See all the buying options on our pricing page . Want to learn more about the individual desktop or iPad apps? Check out the dedicated pages for Photo 2 , Designer 2 and Publisher 2 . Have questions about V2? Browse our FAQs . For tutorials and other learning resources, head over to our Learn page .