equivalent to select forward

[rickrickrickrick]

in most video editing software you can select all clips on the right side of the playhead at the press of a button.

how do i do this in after effects?

i have quite complex composition, i cant just shift click all of the layers because it would also select the wrong ones.

[Dave_LaRonde]

Um, sorry, but no.
AE is NOT a video editing application, despite rumors to the contrary. Thus it doesn’t behave like a video editing application. The funcrioning you seek would in fact be disastrous in AE.

[creps777]

How are you to say AE is not a video editing application without providing what YOU think it really is? Also paired with the fact that the company Adobe literally labels it as that, a video editing application that functions just as others do but at a higher level than most.

[Warren Heaton]

@creps777 

Hi, After Effects is grouped with "Video" in Creative Cloud Desktop.  Is it showing "Create visual effects and motion graphics" next to it?  You should also see, "Create and edit films and video" next to Premiere Pro, "Design and mix digital audio" next to Audition, and "Output video files in a variety of formats" next to Media Encoder.

There are easy ways to select Layers in After Effects, but it should not be thought of as being like Premiere Pro where we have Tracks that contain source footage rather than Layers that consist of source footage.

[Byron Cortez]

You need to use Precompositions in Ae, this is one of the best way you have to group your Layers making easy select it. Obviously the way to work it's different. 

[Roland Kahlenberg]

AE doesn't provide an auto feature to select layers forward or back in time relative to a distinct point in time. You can do so with KF selections (right-click on a KF to prompt a pop-up menu and commit to appropriate selection) but not layers.

Other than precomposing to reduce the number of layers within a comp, you will want to look at grouping layers based on their Label Colors, in the Timeline. You can create a shortcut to select layers with the same Label Color as well as shortcuts to create/apply Label Colors to selected layer(s). The Keyboard Shortcuts Visualizer (KSV) is where you create these shortcuts. In the KSV, search for Label to quickly view the Commands related to Label Colors. Then, create the shortcuts for these Commands.

You can also select (first layer) and then add SHIFT when clicking on the another layer, to select a contiguous group of layers. For non-contiguous layer selections, use the CTRL key while selecting additional/subsequent layers, after having selected the initial layer.
HTH