It is very strange because after having thought of all this, the cursor DOES change but only AFTER having clicked.... Which is useless because once clicked, who cares of the cursor ?

As for smart guides, nobody use them when we draw by hand, because they always drive you in a place you don't want to go. Smart guides are not the solution. There is a tolerance and a cursor change on anchor points while smart guides are off.
So why not on bezier handles ? The developers just forgot something in my opinion....

Of course I tried, and this is in my first comment ;) ! Preferences doesn't allow tolerance on bezier handles. Only on anchor point. And this is confusing for users.
You don't have the same bezier points as me because I changed that in preferences (that is on your screen capture).
Your video is not at 100% which is confusing... It is not the good size of points. But it shows exactly what I'm pointing out and which, when you use very often, is annoying : the cursor doesn't change on bezier handles. This is where the nightmare is : you can only guess that Illustrator will grab it or not.

Fairly enough, I didn't "notice" this selection as a "nightmare", since I rely heavily on smart guides, which, indeed, displays "handle" when you get close to one (see mp4 down there).

Also, on your screen, the dots seem smaller and to lack a tolerance, which is available as a preference in Ai. I suppose you tried some of that ?

Heartily seconded.

Tolerance is a problem, but the style of the cursor too. Showing where the cursor will REAlLY grab the handle is a solution. I show this here : https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/37709080-show-a-different-cursor-on-bezier-point-and-add-t

I suggest a solution here : https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/37709080-show-a-different-cursor-on-bezier-point-and-add-t

Hello, I posted another one here : https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-feature-requests/suggestions/37709080-show-a-different-cursor-on-bezier-point-and-add-t because there are several problems on these bezier points...

Hello,
Grabbing bezier points is a nightmare. There is no tolerance (the one in preferences works only for anchor points) and there is no cursor change (although there is one on anchor points).
I show you how this nightmare can be with a gif.
And I show you how other softwares handle this problem by changing the cursor over a handle bezier point.

Using Illustrator 23.0.1 and this is still broken! I need to zoom in so close to select and move anything that isn't a big solid shape.

Is there a solution for this in the latest update? I'm still facing problems while selecting and moving the anchor points from the path

The Tollorance is still broken, example set it to 1px and try to select something. It selects it even while its 50-100px aside of it.

Another super annoying issue, it constantly goes into rotation mode. Im riding a rolleer coast here because i need to none stop zoomin and out.

They really broke this part and has been like this for quite ome versions. I think somewhere around 2015/2016 it started to act like this.

Selection in the new illustrator is so annoying, I've had no problems with all older Illustrator versions, before it went to creative cloud. Why has it changed? You have to really zoom in to select anything below 1cm, it wasn't like this before. I think its because they've added the curve dots to the corners which we don't think we need. I've seen lots of other people commenting about the same thing. There are other things that have changed too, for example, when switching between tools, it doesn't remember what was selected when you want to use the pencil on the selection. Please can adobe look into changing some of these things back that people loved about illustrator in the first place. If it ain't broke it don't fix it, thanks.

The tollerance setting was broken in the previous version. Now in 22.1 it has been fixed for the node points, but it still doesn't work for handles. It is easier to select handles in older versions with tolerance set to 8px, then it is now with bigger handles, but with broken tolerance.

The tolerance for selection bug seems to be fixed in last version (22.1), which can be installed manually. Have you tried it?

Work with bezier handles is a nightmare. Is very hard to grab and move a handle. Also it shouldn't be dependent on smart guides option.

This! The issue is genuinely annoying, it just makes my work so uncomfortable

Thanks! Yeah, I will try it out.

Leo, have you tried the last beta? Tolerance works fine there

Yep, it does seem to be broken. I've tested it on older versions, and it works fine there. There's a feature request to make the handles bigger to make them easier to grab. However, it may be just a bug with the tolerance feature.