Photoshop 2023 preferences lost overnight

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

Can anyone tell me how my PS23 lost its preferences by itself in the night when my iMac was asleep (and PS was not left open)? That was a bit unpleasent, as my shortcuts stopped working. I copied a few sets of PS preferences from my Carbon Copy Clone backup until I found the latest ones. The shortcuts were back! However, the color scheme of PS had changed (plus Neural color was off), as well as the contents of some panels, for example, Color Swatches and Brushes. The former I could load back. A nasty thing!

[davescm]

Did you close down Photoshop or force it to quit with the OS?  The former closes down and saves Preferences, the latter does not and risks corruption.

Dave

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

I quitted PS (and Bridge) and then put iMac to sleep. Next day I lauched PS through Bridge by opening a picture.

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

I need to "reply" to myself, but this a question (not a reply)! I again lost my PS preferences. A couple of days ago, everything appeared to be fine. Now, when I opened PS, I saw that workspaces were lost (??). No idea why. I didn't figure out any other way to get out of this than to copy the PS settings from the backup. To my surprise, this didn't recover the situation. All my (own) shortcuts were still lost. Curiously, I got the info (see the figure) which I don't understand; the file is locked??? I have nothing to do with that. What is this again with PS??? Locked???

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

I don't know - I haven't made a change - PS is behaving badly, for example, Select and Mask doesn't work at all, nothing happens after choosing this function. Can anyone tell, is this some general problem with Ventura??

[kevin stohlmeyer · Accepted solution]

First - double check that Photoshop is listed and active under Apple System Preferences/Security and Privacy Full Disk Access. What could be happening is PS does not have permissions to read the preference folder in the system.

Second - is your Photoshop auto updating? You can check your Creative Cloud Desktop app preferences and disable to manage further updates.

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

Full disk access was not allowed for PS. I changed that. The Creative Cloud Desktop app was in the autoupdating mode. I changed that too. I don't know to have changed these settings at any time (?). For example, I have normally updated PS manually by myself. Is it possible that autoupdate would habe been turned on "by itself"?? Anyway, none of these changes allowed me to save my preferences! The error message I sent previously did appear upon quitting PS. Then I looked at the permissions of the PS 2023 settings. Well, I was replaced by system!!! I deleted the system and added myself there. AND THEN, I was able to save the PS settings! One strange thing is that there is the name wheel which has a permission to read data. In all other preference folders there is the name staff, no wheel. If somebody knows what this means I'm happy to get the news! I may mention that I don't know to have changed the permissions (!?!).

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

Thanks for everyone for your comments!!!

[kevin stohlmeyer]

Hi @tuomasvirtanen.net This really sounds like your Photoshop auto updated. This page explains how to restore or migrate preferences

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preferences.html#backup-photoshop-preferences

and this page talks about how to migrate presets (workspaces, etc) from previous builds

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/preset-migration.html

[tuomasvirtanen.net]

Thanks!