Troubleshooting
The Help menu does not open this guide
Help Viewer caches help books, so after Qwing is updated it can keep showing the old version — or nothing at all.
- Quit Qwing.
- In Terminal, remove the Help Viewer caches:
rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.help*anddefaults delete com.apple.help - Reopen Qwing and try the Help menu again.
If the guide still does not appear, make sure Qwing is in your
/Applications folder. Help Viewer is more reliable about finding help books
belonging to apps installed there.
Searching this guide returns nothing
Search inside Help Viewer needs an index that is built when the help book is packaged. If that step failed on the machine the app was built on, the book is still fully readable — every page is reachable from the Contents list and the navigation links — but search will find nothing. Browsing works either way.
Export produced nothing, or a blank file
Qwing refuses to write an empty export, and tells you which of these happened:
- Empty selection — Export Selection Only was on but nothing was selected. Select something first, or turn the option off.
- Empty canvas — the canvas had nothing on it to draw.
- Could not create the image or Could not encode the file — the export failed while rendering or writing. Try a smaller scale, or a different format.
If the export succeeds but looks wrong, check whether Show Grid is on — it includes the grid in the exported image.
A recent document will not open
Recent documents are remembered by location. If a file has been moved, renamed or deleted since you last opened it, Qwing says it can no longer be found. Choose File ▸ Open… to locate it, or Clear Menu to tidy the list.
An image will not open
Open Image… accepts bitmaps (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, HEIC, WebP) and SVG. If the file is corrupt, or is a format macOS cannot decode, Qwing reports it as invalid rather than opening a blank document.
Some SVG files did not import
Qwing imports the SVG files it can and reports the ones it could not read, so a single bad file in a multi-file import does not lose the rest. Very complex SVGs, or ones using features outside the SVG subset Qwing understands, are the usual cause.
I cannot select an object
It is probably locked. Locked objects cannot be selected on the canvas — that is the point — but they can be selected from the Layers list, where the lock button is. Click the lock there to unlock it.
If the object is not locked, check whether you are inside a group. Press Esc to step back out, or double-click to reach a specific child.
The eraser deleted more than I expected
The eraser removes whole objects, and dragging it across the canvas removes every object it touches. Press ⌘Z to undo. If you want to take objects out of the way without destroying them, hide them in the Layers list instead.
A favourite style cannot be deleted
A style that objects in the current document still use cannot be deleted — removing it would leave those objects with a style that no longer exists. Qwing tells you which situation you are in rather than deleting it silently. Either change those objects to another style first, or leave the favourite in place.
Snapping is fighting me
Turn off Snap to Guides in the View menu, or in the inspector's canvas section. The setting is remembered between launches, so turn it back on when you are done — it is genuinely useful for most work.