[UI] Simplify track selection and full time range selection logic

[anakryiko]

Currently, UI requires time range selection in the UI to be able to select tracks using that checkbox next to track name. This causes unnecessarily cumbersome flow where you first need to select any random time range (preferrably small, otherwise entire UI starts calculating aggregation of tons of slices which are not going to be even looked at because the goal is to the start selectively checking only necessary tracks). Anyways, once some random time range is selected, UI starts showing track check boxes and allows to do track-by-track selection. And from there we can adjust time range further.

This is quite cumbersome in practice. It would be great if those checkboxes where available right from the start, and if any track is selected this way then time range should be assumed to be selected from start to end.

As somewhat tangent request, it's equally cumbersome to go from partial time range to full time range: if you just deselect time range, track selection is forgotten. And adjusting time range carefully using sliders just to select entire time range is unnecessarily time consuming (and requires quite a lot of careful mouse manipulations...). Using ctrl/cmd-A to speed up time range selection has its own downsides: all the tracks are selected and UI is churning through tons of aggregations which are not really going to be used.

So in short, it would be great if some improvements could be made in this area to make a common scenario of working with a subset of tracks across entire time range much simpler. Thanks!

Here's a video demonstration of things I describe above:

Screen.Recording.2026-01-23.at.9.57.52.AM.mov

[stevegolton]

Hello and thanks for the feedback.

I'll address your issues as I understand them one by one - feel free to correct me if I've misinterpreted something.

Problem 1: You have to select a time range first before checkboxes appear, but this kicks off an unnecessary processing.

You can click and drag on the ruler bar (above the tracks, below the minimap) to create a selection with no tracks in it. The checkboxes appear and you can use them to add tracks to the selection. The UI doesn't start processing anything until tracks are added to the selection.

Problem 2: It's cumbersome to go from partial time range to full time range

If you have a partial time range selected, press Ctrl/Cmd+A to select the entirety of those tracks. The tracks in the selection don't change, just the time range. If you press Ctrl/Cmd+A again, you'll select the entire trace.

Note this also works on the trackless selection mentioned above. Drag on the ruler bar and press Ctrl/Cmd+A

That said I'll acknowledge a few problems:

• These features not discoverable.
• I realize the solution to problem 1 is a workaround, though I'm reluctant to add persistent checkboxes as we're limited on space in the track shell already.
• Dragging the time range manually is admittedly fiddly. It's all too easy to misclick and lose your selection entirely. I'd suggest maybe an undo feature or a more persistent area selection would be valid solutions here.

In terms of where we go from here, I'll leave this issue open as a feature request. I can't make any guarantees about when we'll get to any of this, though I'm happy to take a look at sensible PRs. I think at the very least we should work out a way to make the existing features more discoverable.

[anakryiko]

hi @stevegolton,

Thanks a lot for all this information. I didn't know about this "contextualized" behavior of cmd-A, I'll be using that all the time now! So yes, from my point of view I do have work arounds now.

I'm reluctant to add persistent checkboxes as we're limited on space in the track shell already

Can you make those checkboxes visible only when mouse cursor is hovering over that track? This would avoid the space cluttering issue, but would still be very natural for users.

As for the issue of expanding time range to the full one, one thing I tried instinctively (as it felt "natural") was to double-click on time bar, expecting it will expand to full time range. I think for time bar this should be pretty easy to do as there is nothing to interact with there, if I understand correctly.

I actually have similar instinctive expectation for clicking on free space in normal thread tracks, tbh. Current behavior where I have some selection, I click on it (accidentally or not), and that selection just disappears has caused me so much grief :))

But again, I think my issue is mitigated thanks to your cmd+A know-how, thanks a lot! Consider everything else as just anecdotal suggestions. Thanks!