Where would you expect a pen to write...? Of course at the tip!
All Inkscape tools seem to have a pretty obvious point of focus. Rectangle, ellipse, star, pencil, bezier, dropper, etc ...


So, what would you expect for the standard arrow for selection? The tip of the arrowhead? Not really...
It seems to be somewhere in the center of the arrow more to the shaft/scape. But not always. Is this maybe why it's called Ink-scape? .

Can maybe anybody explain the mechanism of selection, i.e. where and why the arrow selects somewhere?
Can this maybe be somehow changed to be always at the tip/head of the arrow?
For small objects it would facilitate selection. And yes, of course, you always can zoom in and out again...

I only know that you can set the grab distance in the settings (Edit > Preferences > Input/Output > Input devices). Maybe that info helps to determine how it works? I'd also check for stacking order and specific corners of object bounding boxes.

My grab sensitivity is 2, and it does select at the tip of the arrow. I don't remember what the default grab sensitivity is, but I know I've changed it at some point.

Don't forget to restart, to make change take effect.

As I increase the number in the grab setting, the selection seems to move down and to the right.

The lower the number, the closer to the point of the arrow.

Default is 8, I think - or at least I'm relatively certain I've never changed it.

Ja, mine was set to eight. I had never changed it until today.

Thanks, @Moini, that helped. I always was wondering what the selection rule is. Sometimes it is the square above, some times below...
Menubar | Edit | Preferences | Input/Output | Input devices | Grab sensitivity
With changing this value to 1 px it it really selects at the arrow-tip.
However, as always, there is a trade-off: Now, of course, you have to select a thin line very precisely.
So, as @brynn suggested, 2 px seems to be a good value. 8px was the default.
OK, and now it's also clear to me why the other tools are "precise", because creating a line, circle, setting a node or getting a color value, etc...is of course different, because you are setting a point. When selecting an object, a certain uncertainty helps .
But I am still wondering, even if the grab sensitivity is 8px or larger if it was possible that the selection nevertheless selects the object which is closest to the arrow-tip?

theozh wrote:But I am still wondering, even if the grab sensitivity is 8px or larger if it was possible that the selection nevertheless selects the object which is closest to the arrow-tip?

Probably, these two "extreme" cases are possible...? (or is it even with circles?)
But I don't know how the detailed selection process is realized, how it's testing overlap of an object with the "Grab sensitivity box", i.e. whether it starts with of the upper left corner or the center, or something else... or as @Moini wrote with the stacking z-order of the objects... or something else...
...I would like to know just for curiosity...
BTW, sensitivity is not increasing with higher px number. So, instead the term should be called more something like "grab tolerance". FWIW...

I think that to solve this riddle, you'd have to read the code. I've been able to follow it to something with 'arena', 'pick' and 'delta', but couldn't find where the actual computation for the distance is done. Actually the term is 'cursortolerance' in the settings source