Interactive Selections & Other Selection Basics
Interactive selection includes selecting features (individually or several at a time) through the QGIS interface, within a Map Canvas or Attribute Table.
Included in this tutorial:
Interactive selection within Map Canvas, including the Select Features tool
Clearing the current selection
Interactive selection within the attribute table
Zooming and panning to selected features
Isolating selected records
Software version in examples: QGIS-LTR 3.40.5-Bratislava
Tutorial Data: The tutorial includes demonstration with sample data available here.
Credits: Sally Kaye and L. Meisterlin (2025)
Interactive Selection within Map Canvas
finding the Select Features tools in the Selection Toolbar
Interactive selection in QGIS is performed with Select Features tools, which can be accessed in the Selection Toolbar.
After clicking the Select Feature(s) tool, click on a feature to select it. Shift + click additional features to expand the selection. The example below demonstrates interactively selecting features from the Points1_Table1_join feature class. By default, selected features will be highlighted in yellow within the map canvas.
interactively selecting features from a point layer
The default Select Feature(s) tool also allows you to select by clicking and dragging a rectangle around a group of features.
Features selected within a map canvas are simultaneously selected in the attribute table of the corresponding layer. The number of selected features is also displayed at the top of the Attribute Table panel.
selecting multiple features from a point layer by clicking and dragging
For additional options to interactively select features by clicking and dragging, click the dropdown arrow next to the Select Feature(s) tool.
accessing interactive selection options
Clearing the Current Selection
To clear selections from all layers, click the Deselect icon in the Selection Toolbar.
deselecting selected features
To only deselect features from a specific layer, click the dropdown arrow next to the Deselect icon and choose Deselect Features from the Current Active Layer.
Interactive Selection in the Attribute Table
Interactively select features in an attribute table by clicking on the row numbers next to desired features. Features selected this way are simultaneously selected in the map canvas. Shift + click can be used to select multiple features in a row, and command + click can be used to add individual features to the selection.
selecting features in the attribute table
You will notice that selected features are highlighted in blue in the attribute table and, simultaneously, in yellow in the map canvas.
Zoom and Pan to Selected Features
In the toolbar at the top of the attribute table, click the zoom icon to focus the map’s extent on the selected features.
Click the pan icon to pan map canvas to selected features without changing the map’s scale.
panning and zooming to selected features
Additional selection features in the Attribute Table
The toolbar also has buttons for inverting the current selection, selecting all features, deselecting all features, and selecting by value.
more functions in the attribute table toolbar
Show Selected Features
To change which features are visible in the attribute table, click Show All Features at the bottom of the attribute table.
Clicking Show Selected Features will hide all unselected features in the attribute table.
showing only selected features
In this menu, you can also find more options to filter features shown in the attribute table.