On Fri, 2020-02-07 at 15:06 -0800, David Johnson via gimp-user- listwrote:

II am unable to just select my object on the canvas without having to engage in an action from the overwhelming list of selection tools at the top left.

Correct. But you can approach them one ata time - rectangle select is the easiest :)

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On 2/8/20 12:06 AM, David Johnson via gimp-user-list wrote:

I am giving Gimp a try for the first time and would like to know if the following is intentional. There appears to be no regular pointer for the mouse…. As in “ the black arrowhead” normally the selection tool. As a result, I am unable to just select my object on the canvas without having to engage in an action from the overwhelming list of selection tools at the top left.

Is this intentional or am I missing something?

Lamb Design.

This is standard behavior. There is no "object selector" tool, object selection is a side effect of the Move tool, that will pick the topmost non-transparent layer where you click. But since there are many cases where one of the topmost layers covers the whole canvas and is at least partially opaque, this method is not always usable. You can always select objects by clicking on them in the Layers list.