Can't select bones in pose mode

Question

I'm new here so I don't know if I'm making this question in the right place, but I'm having an issue with bones in Pose mode and would be so thankful if anyone could help.

I can select them without any trouble in Edit and Object mode, but whenever I move to Pose mode I can't select them anymore. I could select them on the Outliner, but that isn't very practical nor intuitive.

Also, whenever I do select the intended bone, I get no outlines, just a very faint coloring on the object. That gets really confusing when I'm using bendy bone segments, as I can't tell whether they are there or not in side and front views.

I'm on Blender 2.82.7

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest version, updating my drivers, but nothing has worked so far.

Sumarized:

• I can't select individual bones in pose mode unless it's from the outliner

• Whenever I can select the bones, I can't see their outlines

Answer 1

I had this exact same problem when trying to bring an armature from 2.8 into 2.79, and I found a solution that worked in that case, so maybe it will work for you as well. Try the following:

Create a new additional armature with a single bone in your project file. Then in Object mode, select your problematic armature (the one you can't select bones from in pose mode), shift-select your new single bone armature, and join the two (ctrl-j).

When I did this I was able to select all of my original bones in pose mode again.

Answer 2

I've got the same problem and realized that it was because a saved the file with armature in Pose mode. If I save in object mode, all goes prety well. Must be a bug,to be solved in 2.83.

Answer 3

I was experiencing some of these symptoms and jumped to the conclusion that I was experiencing a potential bug; later, I found that in my case it was due to a simpler cause -- and giving a simpler solution. If you are experiencing this issue, it can help to rule out the simpler cause first.

In my case, the symptoms I was experiencing were due to my accidentally toggling Tweak/Cursor mode.

The following is demonstrated using version 2.91.0

Suppose your workspace appears like the following:

First open up the menu that exposes the Tweak/Cursor mode setting:

In my case, I achieved this by dragging from the left edge of the workspace window.

Opening it a bit further helps illustrate it better:

Here is what it looks like for me when I hover over the Tweak mode setting, showing the shortcut that enters me into Tweak mode.

And here is what that looks like when hovering over the Cursor mode setting:

When I'm stepping through an animation using Shift-Space it is easy for me to accidentally toggle into Cursor mode, for which the shortcut is Space-Space.

When I'm in Cursor mode, I can select the first bone using Shift-Select but not Select. When I'm in Tweak mode, I can select the first bone using Select.