Sonny Software

When I opened Formats Manager to select a different format, I was surprised to find only a few of the many default formats in that now very short list with my few custom formats. All of the formats appeared to be present in the ~/Library/Application Support/Bookends/Formats/ folder.

After quitting Bookends, I tried renaming the Formats folder and renaming it back to Formats. Restarting Bookends, the formats were not found. I renamed the missing formats older to "invisible Formats" and copied "Formats" from my backup into the Bookends Folder. Restarting Bookends again, the formats were rediscovered. Moved "invisible Formats" to the Trash. All the expected default formats were still there in Formats Manager.

Just posting this experience in case anybody else encounters this enigma.

Mark

Could be the OS security suddenly denying Bookends permission to access that folder. A good number of tech support requests I get are due to bugs in macOS security features, it's incredibly annoying. All you can do is tinker like you did and see if you can get around it. Giving Bookends Full Disk Access in Privacy sometimes helps, too (sometimes not).

Jon
Sonny Software

I think your hypothesis may be correct that macOS security policies are not consistent. Bookends does have Full Disk Access, yet this occurred. Fortunately, on this occasion it had an easy resolution. I've "downgraded" to Catalina partly because these problems were much more frequent and difficult to address in Big Sur with its stronger security policies.