MSIX or MSI/EXE?

The MSIX version, is the version that you get if you buy from the Microsoft store. Apps installed from the Microsoft store operate in a more protected environment. That can sound like a good thing, until you need to have one program be able to launch another program and tell it what file to open. Then, it becomes a problem. People who use photo editing programs quite often launch those programs from other programs that do their photo organizing. This cannot be done with the MSIX version. This can only be done with the MSI/EXE version.

Another thing that can only be done with the MSI/EXE version is to have helper programs that actually interact with the drawing program. There is a utility called lazy Nezumi Pro that gets between the stylus input from Windows and the stylus signals that get sent to a drawing program. What that utility does is add all kinds of automatic guides so that you can automatically draw with perfect perspective or all kinds of other things. It essentially adds features that do not exist in whatever drawing program you have running. Those configurable drawing guides are exactly what I needed for the type of drawing that I want to do. Lazy nezumi Pro will only work with the MSI/EXE version of the affinity products, because it needs to be able to insert itself between the stylus signals from Windows and the actual application. This would not be allowed with an MSIX type program.

exe if you have plug-ins that need to find the exe for affinity

MSIX was causing performance issues for a lot of users, there's a long thread about it on the forums. The MSI option was added later for Affinity V2 because of that, so I would recommend the MSI.

I use MSI/EXE. MSIX is a proprietary package format created by Microsoft during Windows 8, it serves its purpose, but the other distribution format gives me much more control of where and how the program is installed. Admittedly, I am a power user with much more specific needs, but if you are just looking for the program to install and run, neither should really matter.

I had problems with msix crashing, and I installed exe, didn't have any problems since.

I’ve used MSIX, nifty to be able to fetch the updates if I’m incredibly lazy to get the EXE from the website, I personally would say use whatever is convenient to your use case

I've been using the default MSIX installer (the first one in the dropdown on the download page) since 2.0. I don't like the modern Windows installer setup because it's janky.

When there's a new version, I get the pop up in the app but clicking "install" has never worked. I have to use Powershell to manually update them, which means I have to download them first manually. I don't use Powershell for anything else so anytime there's an update, I go to Serif, download all three apps into a dedicated Affinity Versions folder, open Powershell, and cycle up to the last command I ran which was the update command. Works great but a regular designer with no dev/techie bent would be annoyed/confused (I'm a dev first and a half ass lay designer second).

I don't really think it matters. MSIX worked fine for me on Windows 11

Those of you who ditched Adobe, what video editor are you using instead?