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Your iPhone has multiple touch and gesture capabilities that can enhance how you interact with apps. Some, like pinch and zoom, are well known enough to be considered second nature, but others are less obvious, like the one we're about to explain.

multiple-select-gesture.jpg


Two-Finger Drag to Select Items

If have apps where you habitually tap on each individual item in a list to select them – emails in your Mail inbox, for example – it's time to dial in some efficiency and embrace this faster method.

This gestural feature allows you to easily select (or deselect) multiple items in apps like Contacts, Mail, Messages, Voice Memos, Notes, and indeed any Apple app that lists multiple items. Here's how it works.
  1. Open an app where multiple item selection is supported.
  2. Touch and hold the screen with two fingers at the same time.
  3. While keeping both fingers on the screen, drag them down (or up) to select multiple items. As you drag, items will be highlighted to indicate they are selected.
  4. Once the desired items are selected, you can perform actions such as moving, deleting, or organizing them.
two-finger-select-gesture.jpg


That's all there is to it. This simple yet powerful feature streamlines your workflow, saving you time and effort when handling multiple items. Looking to speed up your iPhone text editing skills? Check out our favorite hidden trick by following the link.

Article Link: Select Multiple Items Faster With This Simple iPhone Gesture
 
yet this 💩 is still not available to select multiple attachments (mainly photos) from Messages to delete them easily. Reason #1 why I may just give up and go back to WhatsApp. iOS 18 was my last "hope" but looks like they still have not implemented it. You literally have to click on each photo manually one by one to select them! like WHY. Even in the Photos app you can at least swipe down to select multiple photos. Talk about inconsistency
 
A mention of what version the feature is available on would be helpful since not all features are available in some iOS versions... Also, some users keep their iPhones even after losing software support or has reached end of life in terms of software updates...
 
A mention of what version the feature is available on would be helpful since not all features are available in some iOS versions... Also, some users keep their iPhones even after losing software support or has reached end of life in terms of software updates...
Been in iOS since at least iOS 13.
 
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That was the case for messages for quite some time, until they removed it in iOS 14 for no reason. For the moment you can only select multiple chats, but you cannot select multiple messages within a chat.
 
Could get it working with Notes, but not Apple Mail? 🤔
I got it working with Apple Mail. First time I dragged down on a list of emails, it just brought down the search box. Dragging up worked. And now dragging down does too. There’s a bit of a knack to it.
 
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But it doesn’t seem to work at all for me in Photos.
Photos is a little different. Go into Select mode first, then tap a photo with one finger and drag left or right, then up or down. This is sort of done as a single action, don't tap and hold. (Need to do the left/right action first otherwise it will just scroll vertically rather than doing the multi-select.)
 
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Been using this feature for a long time after discovering it completely by accident. It’s a godsend!
 
❔❔I just use one finger to swipe down over the check marks. Why would you use two fingers?
 


Your iPhone has multiple touch and gesture capabilities that can enhance how you interact with apps. Some, like pinch and zoom, are well known enough to be considered second nature, but others are less obvious, like the one we're about to explain.

multiple-select-gesture.jpg


Two-Finger Drag to Select Items

If have apps where you habitually tap on each individual item in a list to select them – emails in your Mail inbox, for example – it's time to dial in some efficiency and embrace this faster method.

This gestural feature allows you to easily select (or deselect) multiple items in apps like Contacts, Mail, Messages, Voice Memos, Notes, and indeed any Apple app that lists multiple items. Here's how it works.
  1. Open an app where multiple item selection is supported.
  2. Touch and hold the screen with two fingers at the same time.
  3. While keeping both fingers on the screen, drag them down (or up) to select multiple items. As you drag, items will be highlighted to indicate they are selected.
  4. Once the desired items are selected, you can perform actions such as moving, deleting, or organizing them.
two-finger-select-gesture.jpg


That's all there is to it. This simple yet powerful feature streamlines your workflow, saving you time and effort when handling multiple items. Looking to speed up your iPhone text editing skills? Check out our favorite hidden trick by following the link.

Article Link: Select Multiple Items Faster With This Simple iPhone Gesture
Works for me in Apple Mail, but not in the Gmail app.
 
Been using the two-finger drag-select in Mail for years now. Not sure how other folks keep their mail in check otherwise!
 
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