4 Ways to Select Multiple Files on Mac

As the default file manager on Mac, Finder allows users to perform common actions like sorting files, moving items between folders, or launching apps. To move, duplicate and make changes to items, you usually have to select them first. So, today in this post we are gonna talk about the ways of selecting multiple files at once.

You can click to select a single file, folder, app or disk. Yet, how to select multiple items? If you are a new Mac users, the following selections tips could be helpful.

Before making the selection, you can sort the files to help better locate/identify the items. To arrange or sort files, click the blank space in the window, choose Arrange By/Sort BY from the little pop-up window, and select one of the available options.

There are two ways for selecting multiple adjacent files: Click + Drag, or Shift+ Click. The former is to click and continue to hold the click while dragging with a window to draw a selection box to cover the files you want to select. The later is to select the first file, then hold down the shift key, and click the last file to complete the selection.

It is easy to select all items in a window: first click the window to make it active, and click press Command + A (or head to the Edit menu and choose Select All option).

To select multiple nonadjacent files, the solution is Command + Click: press and hold the Command key first, and then click the discontinuous items you want to make changes to. If after the selection you want to deselect one item, just continue holding Command key and then click the item that has already been selected before.

If you want to select most of the files in a window, you can take this way: first press Command + A to select all files, or use Click + Drag to select a large group of files, and then use Command + Click to deselect a few files. That may save you some labor.

These multi-file selection tricks work in all versions of macOS/Mac OS system.