Even though Cubase 13 on Windows has better window handling, I am still encountering issues:
(1) After I close a project and Alt-Tab to the Hub, it does not come into focus. I first need to Alt-Tab to another window, and then I can Alt-Tab to the Hub and it actually comes into focus.
(2) Sometimes when I click on (or Alt-Tab to) the Project window, it does not come into focus or the foreground. My workaround is to Alt-Tab to the Mixer window instead, which will then bring all Cubase windows into the foreground and I can click on the Project window to bring it into focus.
Am I the only person experiencing this and finds this annoying?
Haha, so still same same as Cubase 12 in this regard? I can work on a project window while it is behind another window, e.g. an Explorer window. It won’t come to the foreground until I some weird vodoo stuff. Just clicking on the project window will not do.
I wonder if the even have a real Windows programmer left in the team. Seems to be a bit Mac-centric. (E.g. what is menu point “Preferences” doing in the Edit menu? Thats an old MacOS thing.)
Ah, I’m glad I’m not the only person running into these quirks.
It definitely does not feel like a Windows program - too much UI weirdness still left that gets in the way.
These shouldn’t be hard bugs to fix, so hopefully they’ll get around to doing just that.
Quality-of-life improvements like that don’t cost all that much, but buy you a lot of customer goodwill and word-of-mouth recommendations that no amount of marketing dollars can buy.
I am not able to reproduce this on Windows 11. Here is what I do:
Open Cubase
Create or open existing project
Project is opened
Closing the project by clicking on the “X” button.
If prompted for saving the project I click on No
Back to the hub => the hub is focused. I can press alt for instance and the file menu will be highlighted. If I press alt+tab the hub is the leftest thumbnail, which shows it’s focused.
What are you doing to reproduce your bug? Videos are also welcomed
So far I am not able to reproduce it myself but one of our testers might be aware of this issue. I will contact him.
Hi Armand, thanks for keeping an eye on this forum and taking the time to engage on this, it’s all in the name of creating a better product!
I am currently away from my studio, but will write up exact reproduction steps and make a video (if necessary) to document these two issues. I am on Windows 11 as well.
That would be very helpful. Good to hear you’re also on Windows 11, I was thinking this could play a role here if you were still on Windows 10. Thank you for your time, meanwhile we will try to reproduce it in-house.
Since these issues are intermittent/edge-case-y, I wasn’t able to reproduce issue (1) in the time I had for this.
But I was able to find a different bug that feels a lot like it might be the same underlying issue that I was able to consistently reproduce, and I made a video of it. Here’s what you can see in the video:
After opening the channel edit window, I can Alt-Tab back to the project window, and it comes into focus just fine. I can then Alt-Tab back to the channel edit window, but any subsequent Alt-Tabs just keep the focus on the channel edit window.
Standard Windows behavior is to bring the next window in the Alt-Tab list (that pops up on the screen when you hit Alt-Tab) into focus, and that happens the first time I do this, but then Cubase gets stuck on the channel edit window:
I’ll try to be able to capture issue (2) on video as well, but like I said, it’s intermittent, so that might take a little while until I can find a reproducible case and document it. Stay tuned!
Thanks! I’m having some issues here with the video that doesn’t seem to get loaded, maybe you can send me a dropbox/drive/wetransfer link to it inPM?
That being said, I’ve informed my colleagues about these focus issues and we are trying to focus (pun intended) on them within the next days.
Thank you @Timo00 I was able to report the issue and I have informed the relevant person. At first sight I tend to think the problem lies more on Windows but they will investigate and eventually get in touch with Microsoft if we cannot come up with anything on our side.
One more thing: this bug isn’t new in C13 correct? Since when can you remember encountering it?
Cubase is the only Windows application I’ve come across that exhibits this particular behavior, so my guess would be that it’s something related to how Cubase interacts with the Windows APIs, but I’ll leave it up to your experts to sort that out
I wish I could remember when this bug was first introduced! I think it’s been around pre-C13, but I’m not sure.
I said this about Cubase’s windowing in another thread and got so much stick for spreading “false” information you wouldn’t believe it, from users and, I assume, mods. Post was deleted.
Hi @Armand, I’ve reproduced another window handling bug for you. Here are the steps:
Load a Cubase project that’s fairly complex so that it takes Cubase a while to unload channels
Close that project, and Cubase will show a little window that shows its progress closing channels
While that’s happening, navigate away from Cubase, by, for example, opening a web browser and browsing the web for a little while until Cubase is done
After Cubase is done closing channels, it will show the Hub window, but because your web browser is in the foreground, that Hub window will open in the background. I actually appreciate Cubase not stealing window focus!
Now you want to get back to work in Cubase, so you go to the task bar to click on the Cubase icon. This should bring up the Hub, since that’s the only Cubase window that’s open (confirmed by the brief hover image before the click in the video). However, when you click the icon in the task bar, nothing happens. Well, actually, what seems to happen is that Cubase will consider this Hub window now foregrounded/active, but it isn’t (since it’s not being brought into the foreground/focus).
So you click again on that icon in the taskbar. Nothing happens again. Well, what actually seems to happen is that since Cubase considered that Hub window in the foreground/focused (even though it wasn’t), Cubase now minimizes that hub window behind the scenes!
Now you are becoming impatient and are clicking that Cubase task bar icon for a third time and now the Hub window will actually become foregrounded/focused and show up! Actually, what seems to happen is that it is being brought back from its minimized state as you can see in the animation in the video, and that seems to do the trick to actually foreground it.
This video shows the bug in action:
I’m pretty sure this bug is behind several related window handling issues, so I will await your response to this before spending more time video’ing reproducible cases. Hopefully you can reproduce this one and fix it
We are changing the way Cubase is getting back into focus so that it’s closer to how Windows application work in the upcoming update. Let’s see if this improves your workflow.
I found another issue that seems related and that might shed some light into what’s going on: Today, when using Alt-Tab to switch between windows, I had two “hub” entries show up, one of them called “Steinberg hub”, and the other one “Cubase Pro hub”:
Well that’s surely an unexpected Easter egg you’ve found here indeed. Unfortunately I was moved to another project and I will not keep on on this but I have informed the relevant persons to have a look at it.
