Select > Same > Layer

[Intuos5]

Can we get the option to select objects on the same layer? This is helpful to organise elements by appearance. Since it is currently impossible to apply appearances to layers, the next best thing would be to select all objects that belong to the same layer and then copy paste the required appearance. The feature could also mitigate a lot of collapsing and expanding of the layers panel.

Ideally, there would also be a select by layer command, which pops-up a dialogue which shows the layers panel (incl. all organisation with colour labels) but then without listing the individual objects in layers or groups so it is more compact. This can be useful to make changes on the fly without having to move away from the canvas. It has the same benefits of Select Same Layer and could even be combined: without a selection, the select layer dialogue pops-up and with a selection, it would invoke the Select Same operation.

[chessboard]

You could use "Hide others" on the layer you want so select on. You could than do the "select same" (together with "Select hidden objects" turned off) to select just from the visible objects. Sadly this doesn't work. The problem is, that there are two kinds of hidden (invisible) objects: the ones that are hidden by clicking the dot at the right in the layers palette and the ones that are hidden (invisible) by using the command "Hide others". The last only hides the topmost parent in each hierarchy. Their children are invisible but not hidden. 😬

The "select same" commands should treat invisilbe objects as hidden objects and restrict the selection to only the visible ones.