I’m using Cubase 15 Pro on Windows 11, and I’d like to request a small but very useful workflow improvement regarding the Open / Save file dialog.
At the moment, when opening projects, the “Date modified” column does not appear by default in the Cubase file dialog, even if it is set as default in Windows File Explorer. The column can be enabled manually each time, but the setting does not persist reliably between sessions or folders.
For users working with multiple project versions and archives, being able to see and sort by Date Modified when opening files is extremely helpful, and is standard behaviour in Windows Explorer itself.
Feature request:
Please add an option for Cubase on Windows to:
Remember column visibility (including Date modified) in the Open/Save dialog, or
Provide a preference to enable Date modified by default in Details view
This would be a small quality-of-life improvement but would make project management and version control much more efficient.
Thank you for considering it, and for the continued development of Cubase.
I’m not sure this is possible, at least not unless Steinberg derives/sub-classes a new dialogue, which I think may be too much work.
I’m probably wrong.
Other than that, the modified column shows up when my folders are either set to the Document or General Details view…
I don’t think the appearance of this dialog is usually controlled by the application as it is a generic dialog provided by Windows, but I can’t say how to change it, I tried changing the defaults for that folder type in Explorer (add another column), but it didn’t change the dialog…
In addition…
I don’t have C15, so I don’t know if that makes a difference.
But,
Using C14, if I open the Open or Save dialogue and select the Sort option, there is an option there to add columns - dozens of the blighters. So I added “35mm Focal Lens” ( think it was that, something irrelevant) cancelled the dialog, quit Cubase, waited a minute, opened up Cubase and the Open and Save dialogues - and that column was still there. This just confirms that what happens in other programs, also happens with Cubase (up to version 14, at least).
Thanks for the replies and screenshots — helpful to compare behaviour.
Just to clarify my case: on my Windows 11 system with Cubase 15 Pro, the Date modified column does sometimes appear, but its visibility is not persistent or predictable.
What I’m seeing is:
When opening a project from the Hub, the dialog may show additional columns (including Date modified), even if I haven’t explicitly enabled them for that folder.
If I manually enable Date modified via the column header, it will usually remain visible for a while.
However, after restarting Cubase, switching drives, or opening projects via a different route, the column often disappears again and has to be re-enabled.
So the request isn’t that the column is completely unavailable, but that Cubase does not reliably remember column visibility in the Open/Save dialog, even when Windows Explorer itself is configured correctly.
The attached screenshot shows the columns appearing via the Hub on my system without having edited column visibility beforehand — which suggests the behaviour is inconsistent rather than user-controlled.
A preference or more reliable persistence of column visibility (especially Date modified) would make project/version management much smoother.
I, too, have the “Date modified” column in these dialogs.
I am battling with folders that contain mainly audio files, as Windows gives me all these audio columns that are cool for consumers but not helpful for creators (see your screenshot above). If somebody knows a way to change the columns I’d be very happy to hear about it.
The screenshot shows that that particular folder is “optimised” for Music. If you change it (right-click->Properties) to Documents, then you should see the Modified column.
You can add/remove columns via the Sort or Group menu items.
There is also a tool called WinSetView, which can be used to configure the explorere settings globally in Windows without going through all folder types. It is not very user friendly, though.
Thanks — that makes sense in terms of Windows folder templates influencing which columns are exposed.
In my case though, even when folders are optimised for Documents / General items, the Date modified column still doesn’t persist reliably across Cubase restarts or different entry points (Hub vs File → Open).
So while folder optimisation explains the variability, the core issue for me is that column visibility isn’t consistently remembered by Cubase itself. A preference or more reliable persistence would still be very helpful.
As I’ve said, I think that Steinberg would have to write their own open/save dialogues, or derive a new one from the Windows one. The Windows ones can’t be modified.
There is a precedent, because, if I remember correctly, Cubase for the Atari did not use the Atari selector - they wrote their own.
Yes, I agree — if Cubase is relying purely on the stock Windows Open/Save dialog, then there are clear limits to what can be modified from the application side.
That’s actually the reason for the feature request: at the moment Cubase appears to add some of its own behaviour on top of the Windows dialog (for example, different column visibility depending on entry point, and partial persistence), but without a fully reliable or user-controllable result.
So the request isn’t necessarily “change the Windows dialog”, but rather to provide a Cubase-level solution — whether that’s more robust state persistence, a preference, or ultimately a custom/wrapped dialog (as Steinberg have done historically on other platforms).
Even a small improvement in predictability would make project/version management much smoother.
2nd to the name, Windows Date Modified is probably the most useful and used column for me. Even with Media Bay and all the different types of presets…I configure Date Modified to show up simply because I want to know what was last changed because I tend to update often.
Other apps can mess with this, or cause it to reset. That’s also why the left folder pane often resets to a skinny size. It’s largely been like this since Vista or so. I filed a bug on this years ago, unrelated to Cubase, but turns out, it’s super complicated to fix properly without breaking some apps.
Save As and Open are different dialogs and will each have their own settings.
Column Settings in main File Explorer don’t necessarily carry over. However, the general view setting should, as long as it doesn’t get reset elsewhere.
Thanks Pete — that’s really useful context, and it matches what I’m seeing in practice.
That helps clarify that the inconsistency is largely coming from the Windows dialog state system itself rather than Cubase-specific configuration. My request isn’t so much about changing the Windows dialog behaviour globally, but about improving predictability from the Cubase side where possible.
Even something minimal — like Cubase remembering column visibility within its own session, or providing a Cubase-level preference or wrapper for project browsing — would help avoid the current situation where behaviour varies depending on entry point (Hub vs Open), dialog type (Open vs Save As), or prior application activity.
Appreciate the insight — it explains a lot of the odd behaviour.
I think what everyone here is trying to tell you is that it is predictable. By default mine displays filename, date modified, type and size, every single time. I have never had to modify it and it doesn’t change by itself either. And it doesn’t matter what the entry point is.
As per @Googly_Shakespeare above, I can add a categpry (like Date Created) and it will now show up every time I open Cubase, appearing in both the File Open and Save dialogs consistently.
If it is inconsistent for you then there’s something else going on in your system.
Thanks — I don’t doubt that it’s predictable on your system, and it’s useful to know that you’re seeing consistent behaviour.
The difficulty is that this consistency clearly isn’t universal. As Pete from Microsoft explained earlier in the thread, the Windows Open/Save dialog state can be affected by system history, other applications, and long-standing quirks in how dialog state is stored (Open vs Save As, entry points, resets, etc.). That aligns with what I’m seeing here: the behaviour is repeatable on my system, but not stable in the same way as yours.
So I don’t think the disagreement is about whether the dialog can be predictable — it clearly can be on some setups — but that Cubase currently relies on a Windows mechanism that doesn’t behave consistently across all systems. That’s really the motivation behind the request: not that it never works, but that there’s no Cubase-level way to guarantee or recover a known state when it doesn’t.
Given the confirmation from Microsoft that this part of Windows is fragile by design, a Cubase-side preference or more robust handling would help even users who currently experience inconsistent behaviour due to system history or other apps.
