Hi Ian,

I'm still trying to reproduce the issue. One thing I would like to confirm is, during the times when the formatting bar is not showing, did you release your mouse click after highlighting outside of the text area?

You can refer to my attached video, where in my last few attempts, I release the highlight action when my mouse is outside of the text area.

No, all highlighting was completed and mouse button released while over the highlighted area.

I could not reproduce the issue in my local instance. Is there a site and specific post I can try on?
Also, does it happen on the back-end, front-end or both?