I found some related existing threads [Plug-in Editors Always on top setting not respected] but I feel like I’ve found the specific cause and hoping for verification.
What I’m observing:
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With the global preference “Plug-in Editors Always on Top” disabled in Preferences > VST > Plug-ins, VST instruments consistently honor this setting correctly — no issue there. Insert FX (effects) are the ones affected.
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Every time I insert an Insert FX it defaults to “Always on Top” (which is a bonus bug that needs fixing as well). However if I manually right-click an insert FX window and uncheck “Always on Top”, that corrected state is remembered and persists reliably — including across removing the plugin entirely and re-instantiating it. The last manually-set “Always on Top” state sticks, even after full removal/re-instantiation.
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The thing that actually breaks it is specifically how the plugin editor window gets closed:
- Closing it via Show/Hide Plug-ins: the corrected Always on Top setting continues to be honored correctly afterward.
- Closing it via the “Insert 00: Open/Close Editor for Selected Track/Channel” command, OR by clicking the window’s own close
button in the top left: the corrected setting stops being honored. The next time the editor is opened, it’s back to “Always on Top” ON, ignoring both the global preference and the previously-corrected per-plugin state.
So I don’t think this is about switching app/window focus. I tested that in isolation and that doesn’t seem like the actual trigger (but it could just be my setup?). It seems specifically tied to which close method is used to close the window. It looks like Show/Hide Plug-ins and the Insert command / window X button are hitting different code paths, and only one of them properly preserves the corrected window-level state.
This is on macOS Tahoe 26.6, Cubase Pro 15.0.30 Can anyone else re-create this specific close-method bug? I will elevate to proper issue if so.
Cheers