More information from @Zachman in this report: T70843

Seems like there were issues changing active object when walking with arrow keys.

@Anthony Edlin (krash)
Thanks for the reply.

Do I have to report the bug elsewhere or will the corresponding developers be notified already with this report here?

Another thing I would like to know is how and where possible fixes will be implemented? Will they be integrated in the actual "stable" 2.81 version or will they only show up in nightly builds until release of 2.82?

@David Gonzalez (Bango) It is assigned so the developers will find this report and respond sometime. Sometimes minor things like this are more complex than they seem.

It depends on the severity of bug and risk if any fixes get into 2.81a or some other version.

This is not a bug, just how the walk navigation is currently implemented. Due to other factors when activating elements, walk navigation that moves the active element caused issues. Once D5817 is reviewed and committed I intend to make walk navigation move the active element as expected.

@Anthony Edlin (krash)
Ah okay. And where would I find the 2.81a build (if it will be released)?

@Zachman
Well, if it's not a bug then I don't understand the current implementation of the "navigating with arrow keys in the outliner" function and the "rename with F2" function. If I still have to use the mouse to change the active element then I can also double click on the element to rename it.

@David Gonzalez (Bango) during development of the outliner during the Google Summer of Code, I originally did have arrow key navigation move the active element. But because activation was tied to other events (like toggling edit mode) the behavior felt inconsistent and confusing. Although moving only selection, not active is also not ideal, it was the easiest option to implement during the summer. The code for walk navigation is all there, and once the patch I mentioned is committed, it will be an easy fix to switch arrow key navigation back to the active object.

@Zachman I understand that there are issues with changing the active object through walk selection, but it seems that it would be ok to still rename things not from active object but from most recent walk selection if there is one and then active object only if there is no active walk.

I am no expert at outliner code so I didn't test this extensively, but I see there is code for flagging elements with TSE_ACTIVE_WALK and so I made a small patch that uses that as the element to rename first and then active element only if there is nothing flagged with TSE_ACTIVE_WALK. It seemed to work in the limited testing I did. Here is patch:

@Zachman
Okay, I didn't knew or even recognize that the up and down keys would toggle edit mode. I'm using the 2.80 layout and those keys do only change the selected element in the outliner but only if the mouse pointer is in the outliner window, too.
But, like @Anthony Edlin (krash) mentioned, there must be a way to rename the elements without changing the active element.

"The code for walk navigation is all there, and once the patch I mentioned is committed, it will be an easy fix to switch arrow key navigation back to the active object."
Well, that sounds promising ^^

@Germano Cavalcante (mano-wii)
The title of this task sounds much better now ^^ Thanks!

I've used my diff a couple times now just to rename a bunch of large object count old blend files. So you can add the diff and compile your own blender if you want to rename with walk, while we wait for proper support for active object selection when walking. Maybe coming in this next gsoc.