How To Select Multiple Files On A Mac

Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. In this video I'm going to show you how to select multiple files on your Mac.

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So one of the most frequently asked questions online about Macs is how do you select multiple files in the Finder. There are several different ways and there are some more advanced techniques that you may find useful. So there are three main views in the Finder. Icon view, List view, and Column view. Selecting files in these three different views works pretty much the same. But each one has some slight differences. Let's start with Icon view.

To select a single file, of course, all you need to do is click on it. Now if you want to select a second file you hold the Command key down and click on that file. Now you can see I've selected two files. I can hold the Command key down and select a third file, a fourth file, etc. As many as I want. Clicking with the Command key also works to deselect a file. If I decide I don't want this one included I can Command click on it and you can see that one is deselected. 

In Icon view the Shift key works the same way as the Command key does. We're going to find out that's not true in List and Column view. So I can hold the Shift key down and select more files and deselect them as well. Now if you want to select all files you can do Command A. You can see that under Edit, Select All. So Command A will select all files. This is also handy if you want to select almost all files. So you Command A to select all files and then you can Command click to deselect a few files. So let's say I wanted to move all of the files into this Miscellaneous folder. I can do Command A and then Command click the Miscellaneous folder and now I can drag all of these files into the Miscellaneous folder.

Now when you have some files selected if you just click on another file without holding down any modifier key it forgets that selection and starts a new selection with that one file. So in Icon view you can click on an area that doesn't have a file, like let's say this space right here, and drag and a box will be created that will then select all the files underneath that box. So you can select a rectangular area like that. If I were to hold the Shift key down I can select another rectangular area and add it to that. The Command key works the same way. Also if you already have files selected and you do that then it will invert the selection. So if I Shift click here notice it selects the Home folder there. But then it deselects these. So it selects the opposite of what is underneath the rectangle.

Now if you want to deselect files that are selected you could just click in an area that doesn't have a file. You could click a file to select that one and forget the previous selection. You could also use Option Command A. Under Edit you see Select All. If I hold the Option key down it changes to Deselect All. So I can just use that keyboard shortcut, Option Command A, to deselect everything that is selected. 

Now let's look at List View. List View is similar in that you can click to select one file and you can Command click to add more files to the selection. Command clicking on a file that's already selected will deselect it. You can also click to select a file and then Shift click to select all the files in a range. So if I Shift click on this file notice it selects all of those files. Then I can Command click to deselect some in there. If I click on a file that isn't selected when I have a selection it forgets the current selection and starts fresh. You can also use Command A to select all and use Option Command A to deselect all.

You can also drag to select here. But you have to be careful not to click on the icon or the name. You have to click on an area to the right of the name. If you click and drag there it will do a continuous selection either after or before that file. Now unique thing to List View is you can select at different levels. So I can select a file here and Command click to select another file and another file. Then I can open up this folder and Command click to select a file inside that. I can do that with multiple folders. So I can open up this Miscellaneous folder here. In there I have another folder called Temp that's opened up and Command select that as well. So you can see I've selected all these different files from different levels here. 

Column View is similar to List View in a lot of ways. I can click to select a single file. I can Command click to select multiple files. I can click on one file and then Shift click on another to select a range. I can do Command A to select All. Option Command A to deselected all of those. However I can't select files at multiple levels. So if I open up this folder here and select say this file and if I Command select this file you can see it forgets about that initial selection. Actually it awkwardly selects the folder that contained that previous file. So if you want to select things at multiple levels it's the List View you want to use, not Column View. You can also select a range here by clicking outside of the name and dragging up or down to select the range. 

Once you master selecting multiple files and folders in the Finder you find that you can use these skills inside of apps as well. Anytime an app has multiple things in a list or multiple objects on a page you can use the Command key, for instance to select multiple items or the Shift key to select a range. Often Command A is a way to select all of the items that are visible. Often these skills can be used throughout macOS and in different apps.