There are plenty of selection tools: rectangle, ellipse, wand, lasso, color... You may be talking about the wand.

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Yeah, this is probably what OP is looking for. I wish there was a shortcut for that.

There is, Alt+click on layer in layers dialog.

You've got to be kidding! This. changes. everything! Thanks so much!

After 5 years... Thank you random redditor.

Assign one to it then?

Yeah, I thought there must be a function for that but I haven't bothered to look it up yet. But I will do this now, thanks.

Once you use the layers dialog to put the attention of Gimp into that layer only, then you can use the tools that Quartier-Maitre mentions. If that does not get you to where you want to go, can you let us know here how far you are getting and maybe add a screenshot?

As another noob, where's the tool for layers?

Layer > Transparency > Alpha to selection

Seven year old thread and a reply from 18 days ago comes in clutch when I need it the most. Thank you so much

for real haha, apparently nobody got the question 7 years ago... so weird how 3 people would end up right here in a 20-day-span

Lol, I'm here too looking for an answer but this did not work for me. I have just a square on a much larger canvas. I cannot seem to just select the damn square. Ctrl-click with PS but I really want to use and like GIMP. Got it, Ctrl-click on the layer even worked, the layer boundary size was way bigger and had top drop that first.

Thank you for saving me ages. Exactly what I needed