Setting layer as unselectable to avoid identifying features in multiple layers using QGIS

Question

In MapInfo, it is possible to turn 'selectability' off on layers, which means that when you click on the map objects on that layer aren't selected. It's very useful.

Is there a way to accomplish this in QGIS?

I should add that what I am specifically referring to the information tool. In the attached screenshot you can see that the street, the neighborhood and the city were all highlighted, but I would like to restrict it to selecting roads only.

marcp · Accepted Answer

I've stumbled upon the complete answer by blind luck. In the screen shot I included in the question you can see that the 'Mode' selector in the Identify Results panel is set to 'Top Down', which results in all objects below the cursor being identified.

The complete list is :

Current Layer - identifies objects in the currently highlighted layer
Top Down, stop at first - identifies the object in the topmost layer
Top Down - identifies all objects in the order of the layer list
Layer Selection - pops up a dialog showing the list of top down layers. Selecting one causes it to be identified.

The 'Identify Layers' panel in Project Properties is honored regardless of which mode is selected.

There is also a disabled 'View' list control. Nothing I've done enables that... And a help button which actually contains some of this information.

Knightshound · Answer

When you have multiple layers only the layer that is highlighted in the layers panel can have items selected, whether or not this layer is on top, on the bottom, or if its not visible. As long as it's highlighted, items can be selected.

The alternative logic (your question) is that all items that you don't have highlighted in the layers panel cannot be selected. This also goes for multiple items you have highlight, only the last layer is 'selectable'.

This is the closest that I'm aware you can get to what you want to achieve. I'm quite interested in an example of why you would want what you describe?

EDIT: Thanks for the image.  This is a different issue to the question you asked as your not selecting features, rather you're using the identify tool.  Unfortunately I cannot recreate your problem on my system.

Ed Rollason · Answer

If you open Project Properties there is an "Identify Layers" tab that allows you to turn on and off the layers that are identifiable, is that what you're after?

Pavel Pereverzev · Answer

I was looking for a solution to make a layer inactive, i.e. when you use selection tool, nothing happens.
Looked through project settings and in my QGIS version 3.12.3 there are layer flags that can only disable feature identification but not selection.
I remembered that there are also signal settings that can be changed with a use of pyqgis
The command below will fully disable layers' feature selector (however you can highlit them using attribute table).
iface.activeLayer().selectionChange.disconnect()
But still I can't figure out how to reset this thing. Maybe it's about pyqtSignal or something.

Setting layer as unselectable to avoid identifying features in multiple layers using QGIS

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