What's with this selection behaviour that inkscape has when selecting the objects. It selects the left side object (the text block) when I try to select the letter "O". The boundaries of the text block on left side is far away from the mouse pointer. Still selects it. Why?

Is that something the developers can't fix? just curious as it's bit annoying as I always have to lock the objects or hide them before selecting nearby objects. 

Please upload an example file.

@Polygon Thank you for the response.

Here's an example file that shows this behaviour. 

Explicit clicking center of text object works here (Zoom level 31%, Handle size 3):

I am having an identical problem only my objects are overlapping so clicking the center is a worse choice. I can hold down alt and click and it will select the object but then if I try to click and drag to move the object it selects the text again. 

@Polygon, Thank you for the response.

It's so inconvenient to click the centre every time I want to select some object.

Imagine a long rectangle which doesn't show the centre at a given zoom etc

Why can't the selection detect if it's on the actual object boundaries? is it a coding limitation? I noticed somewhere that this was coded using qt?

I have coded software in cocoa for mac and I never got a this kind of selection limitation. I just check if the mouse pointer within the boundaries of the object and return true. I don't understand why it's so difficult to code with qt (although never used qt). 

@ELSKiN 

You're right, it's worse when we have overlapping objects. I drew a circle on a rectangle and when I select the circle, the rectangle gets selected 🤦‍♂️. So, now I lock the bigger object before selecting the small overlapped object.

But it's so annoying as sometimes I want to drag objects and most of the time I forget that I locked the big object. So, all the objects move except that locked one. So I undo it and go unlock and then drag it 🤦‍♂️

Are you using tablets? There my be help for that.

@TylerDurden 

Nop, I'm using a mac. 

I guess Tyler meant a tablet as input device. What kind of Mac are you talking about? There's a setting in Inkscape's  Preferences that should be set off then and maybe can help with your issue. I'm on M1MacMini exclusively BTW and don't have this Problem as you can see above. Could be you're on macOS Sequioa?

@Polygon

yes mac mini, sequioa 15.1.1

So, the inkscape is not made for this device? 

Seems like this is something which coders can't fix. But it's so strange that, it cannot be fixed. 

Could be zooming in more closely can help?

What´s you input device? Mouse, Trackpad ...?

This is a very late reply, but hopefully helps somebody.

[alt+click] let's you select a shape deep in a stack of shapes. Once selected, [alt+click_drag] moves that shape without selecting the topmost shape.

"Explicit clicking center of text object works here (Zoom level 31%, Handle size 3):"

@Polygon: How did you open that link in Inkspace? I may need to do similar in future. Here, clicking or d-clicking it in Chrome results in second screenshot.

P.S. How can a reply in this forum be addressed to a specific poster, apart from the way I've tried here?

Thanks @Paddy_CAD, neat tip.

EDIT: But it seems I can do so by simply left clicking the object, without using Alt.