Since the release of GIMP 3.x I have doubled down on moving away from any dependence on PS, etc. and becoming comfortable with GIMP. I did some complex compositing this week using the new NDE filters and layers and it turned out well.
However, at one point I was having difficulty with the shortcuts for a couple of brush actions. Brush size, e.g., didn’t seem to be linked to any discoverable key or mouse shortcut despite being defined in the settings. The brush would change size as I moved the mouse around, and sometimes the opacity would change while I was trying to do something else.
I have been upgrading regularly via nightly and final release versions so as to track the state of the program, which means the program is creating new settings folders for 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, etc. (MacOS 15, all versions from the GIMP website) So as to eliminate those redundant folders as a possible cause of issues, I just trashed all of them except the 3.2 folder. All of my shortcuts started working properly again and they match the values shown in the shortcutsrc file.
I know as a general rule having multiple settings folders is a bad idea (though I’ve used programs where tinkering with the default behavior by removing seemingly redundant folders also causes problems) but I’ve never seen a mention of it in the official docs. Anyway, just thought I’d offer this experience in case anyone else is plagued by shortcut behavior issues.
And of course thanks to the devs for all the excellent new features being added with each release.