I have enabled "Top panel hiding". The Top panel does hide after the timeout - but NOT if the Record menu line (which pops up above the bottom command line) is shown. The Top panel never hides in this case. As soon as I cross out the Record menu line, the Top panel hides again as expected after the timeout. I guess this is not the intention.
hmm yes it is intention. When is any extra panel visible (like this for track record, panel for definition of new path, etc ..) auto-hide feature is visible. This was created even before track recording panel was available. Intent was that mainly bottom map control items are needed for whole time, panel is visible, so that's why auto-hide is disabled for this case. Hmm maybe just for track recording this should be turned off right? Hmm thinking thinking .. seems that all panels are not needed during track record so OK, I'll try to disable it :)
EDIT: done ...