Cubase window starts behind all other windows (Win 10)

Does anyone else have an issue when starting Cubase (8 onwards), in that the window is always hidden by any other open windows, and only becomes visible once you minimise everything else? Simply clicking on the taskbar fails to bring it to the front for me.

Hi,

Do you mean other Cubase window, or window of another application, please?

Other programs. The empty Cubase window that appears on startup. If I, say, have a browser window and an explorer window open, Cubase will start up behind both of these, and clicking on the Cubase taskbar icon doesn’t bring it to the front as expected. I have to minimise the other Windows first. Once a project Window has loaded, it can be selected and will move to the front, but at startup, it remains behind other windows. Been that way for me since the window enhancements in v8, I think.

Hi,

There are two modes of Cubase. One of them displays a grey desktop background. The second one doesn’t display it, so you can see other apps Windows. You can change these modes by double-click to the menu bar. Does this help?

Could you send a screenshot, please?

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Interesting, shall look into that shortly, thanks.

Just checked both modes, and the Cubase window still sits behind other windows when you try to click it to the front. But like I say, once you’ve loaded a project it works as expected.

Sorry, I have no more idea. I’m just occasional Windows user.

But I would say it’s not a big deal. When it works with the project loaded.

Yeah it’s not a deal breaker, just behaves differently to other Windows… windows. Bit annoying to minimise everything else in order to load a session. Just wondered if anyone else had experienced this.

Any reason for the two window modes you mentioned?

Cubase should come to the front when you click on a Cubase Window rather than the taskbar. If you click on another different program window it will come in front.

Yeah, it’s not following window conventions for me. No idea why, but it’s been this way since they switched the window system (in 8, I think?).

I don’t know the reason for these two window modes. As a Mac user, I cannot see any reason for the grey background over the whole screen. I see more advantages to have an option to see other content, if necessary. But in most cases I don’t care, because Cubase is maximized anyway.

I find this new behavior to be really clunky. The opening behind other windows on load–why would it not come to front automatically like every other program? And sometimes it requires multiple clicks to activate the window once Cubase is already open and I want to bring it to front again; This behavior becomes even more erratic if you have multiple Cubase windows open (like when using the MIDI editor).

I genuinely thought my installation of Cubase was just broken and reinstalled several times to try to “fix” this. Interesting to discover this is just the new standard behavior. Inexplicable change.

I feel many of the changes to Cubase 8+ slow down workflow or just make it somewhat unpleasant to use. Why are all of the scrollbars so unbelievably tiny? Why is there no place I can rest my mouse without something popping out at me? Why must there be this red stop sign cursor when I’m recording and my mouse crosses the timeline? The timeline itself is now an inelegant cluster of things that make it frustrating to interact with. There are certainly some positive improvements in 8, but for many reasons like this I really miss Cubase 7.

Looks like you are running Cubase as a background service :laughing:

Are you making a joke or is that really the cause of the behavior? If the latter, how does one fix this?

I really hate seeing other prgram’s windows. I find it distracting. I never knew about the two modes. Thanks for this!!!

It’s a design flaw and it’s ridiculous. Also, it has been like this for ages. It’s 2021 now and it still opens up behind every other window with a tiny menu strip on top. UI in Cubase = pathetic. Still use it, tho, for lack of alternatives that do what I need.

Must admit I’m getting fed up with the CB window disappearing when i do certain things. Sometimes (most times) takes a few clicks to get it back. A lot of the time the project windows comes back not full sized like i had it.

Yeah, I hate these bugs on the windows version of Cubase. Never had a problem on the Mac version, though. I wonder if Steinberg will ever acknowledge/fix these windows issues. I’m not going back to mac, so if Steinberg doesn’t fix these issues, I might have to look at a different daw.

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I came here to see if there’s a way to fix this exact thing. I open Cubase and while a session is loading, I do other things on my computer. Then when I click on Cubase with my mouse, it doesn’t come to the front. I have to close or minimize windows or click on cubase’s main window in the taskbar. Please fix this Steinberg.