Pointing

Pointing means to look at something with the crosshair (which is in the center of your screen) on it while being close enough to it (in the vanilla Minetest game: less than 4 blocks away outside of creative mode, 10 blocks in creative mode). Pointing things is neccessary for tasks like mining, building, using…

Most blocks can be pointed at, but not all. Also items on the ground can be pointed (in order to collect them). Water can only be pointed with a bucket. Air can never be pointed. There can only be one block pointed at the same time.

By default, a thin blackrectangular wireframe will be shown around the block which you currently point. The colour of the selection box can be changed; the following line in minetest.conf makes the selection box orange:

selectionbox_color = (255,128,0)