Currently, to highlight a net on the PCB from the schematic, the "Highlight Net" tools must be selected on both applications. Unfortunately, it only works for nets. If you want to highlight a footprint on the PCB from the schematic symbol, both "Highlight Net" tools must be disabled. Going back and forth for (almost) the same feature is not practical.
Maybe it would be useful to allow "symbol to footprint highlighting" when the "Highlight Net" tools are both selected as well.
Application: kicad
Version: (5.0.0-rc3-dev), release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.3
libcurl/7.54.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2l zlib/1.2.11 libssh2/1.8.0 nghttp2/1.23.1 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1), 32 bit, Little endian, wxMSW
Build Info:
wxWidgets: 3.0.3 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8)
Boost: 1.60.0
OpenCASCADE Community Edition: 6.8.0
Curl: 7.54.1
Compiler: GCC 7.1.0 with C++ ABI 1011
Build settings:
USE_WX_GRAPHICS_CONTEXT=OFF
USE_WX_OVERLAY=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
BUILD_GITHUB_PLUGIN=ON
KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
KICAD_USE_OCC=OFF
KICAD_SPICE=ON
Version 5.1 is in feature freeze. Moving to 6.0.0 milestone.