Select, Move and Rotate Objects

Keyboard shortcut: S

This tool has four possible modes:

Select tool

Hotkeys

Click	Selects one object. Click in an empty area and drag selects more objects.
Click	Clicking and dragging a red cross in the middle of a segment will insert a new node at the location of the cross.
Click-MiddleMouse	Cycle through the different objects under the mouse cursor (for duplicated nodes or ways sharing the same nodes). Holding "Ctrl" afterwards to directly select an object.
Shift-Click	Holding the "Shift" key when in select mode adds new element to existing selection.
Ctrl-Click	Holding the "Ctrl" key toggles element selection.
Ctrl-Area	Using area selection with "Ctrl" removes elements in area from selection.
Alt-Click	Cycle through the different objects under the mouse cursor (without popup).

This MapMode enables the user to make selections of different objects. The selected objects are drawn in a different style, depending on display preferences and the active styles. The cursor icon will also change depending on the selection mode.

for Mac users

(outdated steps?)

There's no button that works as a middle button like with unix. You can use the middle button with an ​Apple Mouse. Connect Apple Mouse, Open System Preferences, click "Keyboard and Mouse" and configure the Ball button as "button 3". Then it can be used as the middle button. Note that you cannot configure other buttons as "button 3" with the Apple Driver. Maybe you can find a more useful mouse driver for this purpose.

Selecting single objects

Left-click to select the node or way nearest to the pointer. The node or way that would be selected is highlighted as a hint.

If multiple objects overlap or are very close to each other, there are several ways to select a specific object.

• Middle-click to show a pop-up window of nearby objects and to cycle through them.
• Left-click while holding the Alt (or AltGr) key to cycle through nearby objects without showing a pop-up window. To make this type of selection the default, and thus not require the use of the Alt key, change the advanced preference selectaction.cycles.multiple.matches to true.

Hold the Shift key while left-clicking to add the node or way to the current selection. Hold the Ctrl key while left-clicking to toggle the selection of the object (if the object is already selected, remove it from the selection, otherwise add it to the selection).

Double click to select the surrounding area (closed way or multipolygon).

Selecting multiple objects

To select all objects, press Ctrl+A.

Hold and drag the left mouse button to draw a selection rectangle .

• Release the left mouse button to select all objects within the rectangle. All nodes within the rectangle and any ways which are entirely within the rectangle will be selected.
• To cancel the selection rectangle, hold the right mouse button when releasing the left mouse button.

When the mouse button is released and either Alt, Shift or Ctrl is held, following selection is made:

• Alt : in addition to the normal behavior, select all ways that have at least one node within selection rectangle.
• Shift : the objects are added to the current selection.
• Ctrl : remove all objects under the current rectangle from the active selection (if there were any). Nothing is added to the current selection.

Alt can be combined with Shift, but cannot be combined with Ctrl, as this is used for the scale command.

Unselecting

To unselect everything you can either click on an empty area of the screen, or press Esc on the keyboard.

If you have more than one object selected, and just want to unselect one particular object, then click it with the 'Select tool' while holding down Ctrl .

Selecting particular ways

For help on selecting a certain way which shares common nodes with one or more other ways see here.

Move

You can move selected nodes and ways in the main window, by moving the mouse cursor close to one of the selected objects and then left clicking while dragging the mouse.

• If the mouse cursor is near a node when performing the move action, then just this node is moved.
  • If you move a node very close to another node and hold Ctrl when releasing the left mouse button the moved node will be merged with the other node.
• If the mouse cursor is near a way when performing the move action, then this way, together with its associated nodes, is moved.

Moving objects is also possible with shift + arrow keys.

Merge nodes

You can merge selected nodes with another one by holding down Ctrl and dragging one selected node onto the unselected one.

Rotate

You can rotate selected nodes and ways by holding down Shift+Ctrl + left mouse button and moving the cursor.

Scale

You can scale selected nodes and ways by holding down Ctrl+Alt + left mouse button and moving the cursor.

Cursors

The cursor changes to indicate what action will occur:

Cursor	Action
	a node will be selected
	a node will be added to the current selection
	a node will be removed from the current selection
	a way will be selected
	a way will be added to the current selection
	a way will be removed from the current selection
	objects within the rectangle will be selected
	objects within the rectangle will added to the current selection
	objects within the rectangle will removed from the current selection
	the selected nodes will be merged with the node near the pointer
	rotate the selected objects
	scale the selected objects

Advanced details

Whether a mouse action is considered a selection or a move depends on some settings, to prevent objects from being moved when a simple selection was intended; this is particularly important on devices such as tablets that are touch sensitive or use a stylus. If the pointer is moved between pressing and releasing the left mouse button, the object will only be moved if the pointer moved more than 5 pixels or was held down for more than 0.2 seconds, otherwise the object will simply be selected. These two settings can be changed with the advanced preferences edit.initial-move-threshold (pixels) and edit.initial-move-delay (milliseconds).

See also

• Help/Action/LassoMode
• UtilsPlugin2 contains additional selection functionality

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