Things
Select many things at once
Selection mode lets you act on a group of things at once, so one tap moves twenty things instead of one.
Why you'd care
Most cleanup is not one thing, it is fifteen. The Monday to-dos that never happened. The whole grocery list you already bought. The six links you saved on your phone that all belong in one place.
Selection turns fifteen decisions into one, and it is the difference between tidying up in ten seconds and not tidying up at all.
The 60-second version
iPhone, iPad, and Android
Swipe a thing to the left. It gets a filled circle and the selection bar slides up. Tap any others you want, or long-press one further down to take everything in between. Tap an action, then tap OK.
Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux
Hover a thing and click the circle on its right. Click more circles, or hold Shift and click a second thing to grab everything in between. Click an action, then press ⌘Esc.
Step by step
Getting in
iPhone, iPad, and Android
Swipe left on any thing. That is the default, and it is configurable. You can also long-press and choose Select.
Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux
Three ways in. Click the circle on the right edge of a thing, which is the one to learn. Press ⌘⇧⏎ while your cursor is inside a thing, which hands you from editing straight into selecting on the same row without reaching for the mouse. Or drag a thing and drop it, and it stays selected.
Adding, removing, and ranges
Tap or click another thing to add it, and again to remove it. The count on the bar tells you how many you have, which is worth a glance before you press Delete.
Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux
Hold Shift and click a second thing to take everything between the two. From the keyboard, ⌘↑ and ⌘↓ extend the block one row at a time, like a spreadsheet: the thing you started on is the anchor and stays put, and reversing direction shrinks the block again rather than growing it the other way.
iPhone, iPad, and Android
Long-press is the range gesture. Select one thing, then long-press another, and everything between the two is selected. It adds to what you already had rather than replacing it, so you can take one run, then another somewhere else. Long-pressing with nothing selected yet just selects that one thing. On an iPad with a keyboard attached, the desktop shortcuts work too.
Select all
Select all takes everything in the list, including things under a collapsed heading and in a collapsed completed section. Glance at the count on the bar before you act, especially before Delete.
Getting out
Leaving selection mode never changes anything. Nothing is committed until you pick an action.
What you can do to a selection
| Action | Mac | Windows and Linux |
|---|---|---|
| Complete/uncomplete | ⌘D | Ctrl+D |
| Cancel/uncancel | ⌘⇧D | Ctrl+Shift+D |
| Star/unstar | ⌘⇧S | Ctrl+Shift+S |
| Move to list | ⌘⇧M | Ctrl+Shift+M |
| Move a copy to list | ⌘⇧⌥M | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+M |
| Duplicate thing | ⌘⌃⌥D | Ctrl+Alt+D |
| Move to Today | ⌘⇧O | Ctrl+Shift+O |
| Move to Tomorrow | ⌘⇧P | Ctrl+Shift+P |
| Share | ⌘E | Ctrl+E |
| Join | ⌘J | Ctrl+J |
| Split | ⌘⇧J | Ctrl+Shift+J |
| Ask AI | ⌘⌥A | Ctrl+Alt+A |
| Move thing to top | ⌘⇧⌥↑ | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+↑ |
| Move thing to bottom | ⌘⇧⌥↓ | Ctrl+Shift+Alt+↓ |
| Delete | ⌫ | ⌫ |
| Indent (⇥) | not set | not set |
| Outdent (⇧⇥) | not set | not set |
| Copy text to clipboard | ⌘C | Ctrl+C |
| Add hashtag | ⌘⇧T | Ctrl+Shift+T |
Two actions only work on a single thing, because they have no sensible meaning for twenty: setting a reminder and opening thing info. Select one and they light up.
Going further
iPhone, iPad, and Android
The range runs from the lowest thing you already have selected. With a scattered selection, long-pressing extends from the bottom-most one, not from whichever you tapped last. If you get more than you meant, tap OK and start the run again.
A range will not cross into the completed section. When completed things are collapsed into their own group, a long-press range stays inside whichever group you pressed in. It is two lists on screen, so it behaves like two lists.
Select across lists. In the Things view and in search results, selection works the same way, but the things you pick can come from a dozen different lists. Actions still do the right thing per thing: Duplicate puts each copy back in its own list, and Move sends them all to the one place you chose.
This is the fastest cleanup tool in Twos. Filter the Things view down to unfinished to-dos older than a month, select all, move to Today, and you have done a review in about nine seconds.
Join a mess into one thing. Select a run of fragments and press ⌘J. Twos asks what to put between them: a comma, a space, a period, a new line, or something you type. Split does the reverse, and only offers separators that actually occur in your selection, so you can never open a picker where every option does nothing.
Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux
Drag a selection somewhere. Grab any selected thing and drag, and the whole block comes with it. Drop it on a list in the sidebar, on a day in the week bar, or into the right panel. Hold a modifier to change what the drop does: plain drag moves, ⌘ + drag copies, and ⌥ + drag makes a live linked copy that stays in sync with the original in both directions. Plus
Reorder a block. Select it and press ⌘⇧⌥↑. The run moves together and keeps its internal order, which beats dragging twenty rows past each other.
Settings that change this
- Settings Appearance & Accessibility Customize selection actions reorders the bar and hides actions you never use. The first few are the ones you get without opening the More sheet, so put your real four there.
- Settings Appearance & Accessibility Left-handed mode moves the bar's primary controls to the side your thumb is actually on.
- Settings Lists & Things Show completed things inline decides whether completed things sit in the list or in their own collapsed section.
Tips
- Select one thing and the bar still appears. It is often faster than the swipe menu, because every action is one tap away instead of two.
- Select, then Move to Tomorrow, is the whole evening routine. Two taps and the day is closed.
- Selecting in search results is the trick nobody finds on their own. Search a tag, select all, move them into a real list, and you have built a list out of six months of scattered notes.
- Put Tag in your first few selection actions. Tagging ten things at once is the biggest time saver in the bar.
If it's not working
A shortcut does nothing. Your cursor is probably still inside a thing. Selection shortcuts are skipped while you are typing so they do not collide with text editing. Press ⌘⇧⏎ first, or click the circle.
Select all caught more than I expected. It includes things under collapsed headings and in a collapsed completed section. Tap the ones you do not want to deselect them before you pick an action.
Move is greyed out on a shared list. You have view access, not edit access. The list's owner can change your role from the list's Collab button.
Alt and drag moved instead of cloning. Clone is part of Twos Plus, and without it that gesture falls back to a plain move rather than doing nothing. See sublists for the related idea of a thing that holds its own list.
Related
- Thing types, for converting a whole selection into to-dos
- Search, the best place to select across lists
- How unfinished to-dos roll forward, for clearing a backlog by hand
- Sublists, for when a selection really wants to be its own list