10 Ways To Select Multiple Files On Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you all the ways that you can select multiple files on your Mac. 

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Now a commonly asked question about using the Mac Finder is how do you select multiple files. So I'm going to start off here in a Finder window in List View. If I click on a file I can select it. Clicking on a new file will select that new file, deselecting that other one. So how do you select multiple files at the same time? Well, the easiest way to do that is using the Command Key. 

So when I click on the first file it selects it. Now I hold down the Command Key on the keyboard and I can select another file and it will add it to the selection. So now I have two items selected. I can continue to select different files in this window like that. If I click on a file that's already been selected it simply deselects it. So it allows me to quickly add and remove files to further customize the selection. 

Now if you want to select a range of files, a contiguous list, for instance from this file to this file, you can do it by selecting one of those files and then using the Shift Key and selecting the other file. It selects all of the ones in-between. There's another way to select a range of files. That's by clicking and dragging on the left side of the list. So if I click where the name of the file is and drag, then I'm dragging the file even if I click over where the icon is I'm dragging the file. But if I click to the left of the icon and I drag I can drag a selection. I can drag down or up to select a range and release. 

Now you can combine all of these. So, for instance if I were to select this file and then Shift Click to select this file I have a range. Now I can Command Click to deselect some of those and Command Click to add more to the selection.  I can do the same thing if I drag on the left and I select a range. Now I can use the Command Key to further customize the selection. I can even select multiple ranges. So I'll click a file here and then Shift Click to select this file to select that range. Now I'll Command Click to select this file and Shift Click to select that range. 

Another way to do that is using the Command Key while clicking and dragging on the left. So I'll click and drag to select a range. If I click and drag to select another range it is just going to replace the first range. But instead if I hold the Command Key down and click and drag I'll select more on the left. So I can select multiple ranges very quickly by Command dragging on the left side. 

Everything I showed you here in List View works in Column View as well. You can Command Click to select multiple files. You can Shift Click to select a range. You can click and drag on the left side of the column to select a range as well and use combinations. 

But in Icon View things works very differently. First you can use the Command Key to select multiple files as before. So I can select one and then Command Click to select more and even deselect ones. But Shift Click won't work. It just works exactly the same way as the Command Key does. I Shift Click to select another file, and another file, and another file it doesn't select the range. That's most likely because it is ambiguous as to what should happen when you shift click. For instance if I were to select this file and then Shift Click here, should it select these three or should it select the whole range of files between these two on different parts of the grid. You can, however, drag a rectangle around files in Icon View. So you want to click outside of any individual file. So I"m going to click right here between these two and you're dragging a rectangle. Anything under the rectangle is then selected. You can then use the Shift Key to add to that selection like that. But if you just do it again without the Shift Key it starts a new selection. The Command Key works as well to select multiple ones and you can even kind of reverse things. You can see by selecting these two I've added this one but removed that one. 

Now whether you're in Icon View or List View you can use Edit and Select All or Command A to select all the files in this particular Finder window. So Command A selects them all here. Then notice that in Edit if I hold the Option Key down Select all changes to Deselect All, Option Command A. So Option Command A deselects them all. The same thing in List View. Command A and Option Command A.

Now what if you want to select files with just the keyboard. Well you can. When you're looking at a list of files like this if I use the Down Arrow it selects the first item. I can continue to use the Down and Up Arrows to select an individual item. If I held the Shift Key down then it begins selecting a range. But if I then move without the Shift Key with the Down Arrow it restarts the selection. I can use Shift and Up Arrow to select as well. But you can't use the Command Key to select non-contiguous ranges using just the keyboard, at least not with standard methods like this. 

Now this works in Icon View as well. A Down or Right Arrow will select the first item and you can use the Arrow Keys to move around. If I hold the Shift Key then I'm selecting a range. But notice if I go down now it just selects the next file there. So I can kind of select a pattern of files like that by moving around with the arrow keys. But it does something different if you're actually sorting the Icon View. So right now I've got View, Sort By set to None. So it is however I arrange the icons. But if I were to change that to say Name, now it is force sorted by Name. So if I drag something it's just going to drag back to its sorted order. Now if I use the Down Arrow key and select a file, like that, and then use the Shift Key and go down it will select the whole range and I can use the Right Arrow Key and the Left Arrow Key and Up as well. So the range will work as long as you set a Sort Order for Icon View. If you have it set to None then it works very differently. So while you can't click on one file and then Shift Click on another to select the range, you can click on one file and then use Shift Down Arrow and Right Arrow to select a range. 

Now let me show you a method that could work for you to select multiple files with just the keyboard. It requires using a special tag that you create. I've turned on the Tags Column here. You can Control Click here in the top of List View and turn on Tags. You don't need to have the Tags column visible but it helps to explain what I'm doing. Now if you're using lots of other tags then this probably isn't  going to work. But if you're not currently using Tags for anything this should work fine. If you go to Finder and then Settings then you can go to Tags here and you can see all of your tags. Red is in the first spot. So we're going to use red for this. If you're already using red for some other purpose then it's not going to work. You're going to want to add another Tag, maybe called selected files or something like that, and then move that into the first position. Now, I can tag anything using Control and the one key. Control and 1 will add the first tag from My Favorites. So I can do Control and 1 and you could see red is added here. I can go down and add that for any files that I want. So I've added these four files with red tags. I also will see it here since I've got a color set for that. But if you're not using a color then you're not going to see that. 

Now that we've got that setup I could go to View, Sort By and then Tags. Control Option Command 7. So, Control Option Command 7 sorts by tags and now notice all of the red tagged  files are together. So I can go to the first one with the keyboard, Shift and go down to the last one. Now I've selected those files. Now I can go back to the regular sort, Control Option Command and 1 which sorts by name and notice the selection stays there. At this point I can Untag them because I don't need that anymore. Control 1 untags them all. The red tag is gone and now I've got my non-contiguous selection there using just the keyboard. You don't have to have this tags column visible at all for this to work. You can still sort by tags even if you can't see the column.

The only time this won't work is if you have other tags applied because then sorting by tags won't know exactly which tag to use in the sort. So you won't always end up with the red tagged files together. But you could always, if you have them all tagged red like this, do a Command F for Find and then search for red and Select Tags Red and now you've got all of the files with the red tag. Use the down arrow to select the first file, Command A to select them all, and now you can do something with those files. It's not quite the same as having them all selected in that folder, because now you're looking at them in a search results window. But it does work to get some jobs done. 

Now I did want to show you one last technique that you can use to select multiple files that only works in List View. I'm going to do Command Up to go up to this level here. In List View you can select multiple files from different folders. Something you can't do in Icon or Column View. So I'm going to open up this folder here and also this folder here. Now I can use Command Click to select multiple files, not just in one folder but in another folder. I can even dig down into subfolders, like this, and now you can see I've got these. You can see I've got a total of 7 files now selected. Seven files from three different folders. So now if I want to do something like open all those files, move all those files to another location or copy them somewhere, I can do it even those those files are not located in the same folder. You can't do that in Column View and you can't do that in Icon View. 

So there are a whole bunch of different techniques for selecting multiple files on your Mac. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.