Nightingale PTR Portal
It's nice to have the option to converse with your companion, but it now takes a keystroke, a wait, a keystroke, and a mouse click to get to their inventory, or using the radial menu which should never be the best way to do something.
Best suggestion: Global setting for whether non-estate survivors default to conversaton or inventory, or just make it the default for non-estate survivors.
Next-best: Per-survivor option for default action.
Annoying. But I did find the same workaround you did. Hold the E key to bring back the radial menu. Manage inventory is there.
Perhaps an option to toggle something, or a hotkey for "manage survivor's inventory"?