Selecting multiple notes in the mobile app

[pisces]

Use case or problem

Often I want to select multiple notes to move to a different folder, for example, and it doesn’t look like Obsidian has this feature in the mobile apps at the moment? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I found these two posts under the Help forum with similar questions, but no answers:

• Mobile app, Select multiple notes?
• Selecting multiple files/notes in mobile

Proposed solution

An option to select multiple notes under the menu that pulls up when you long press a note (or somewhere else)

[StavrosL]

thumbs up for that

[Sfogrrlinnyc]

Enthusiastic +1

[obsidianfan2]

Thanks for keeping this thread open for so long. (I wonder why others were closed.) I found a workaround and want to ask (again) whether there is someone at this.

I especially became eager for selecting multiple files with the newly added feature “File Explorer now includes a menu option to create a new folder with the selected items.” (v 1.8, January 2025)

First I wondered why there is something that seems to be a multiselect functionality by tap-hold a second file and release the finger just before the context menu appears. That makes the file explorer look like this with no effect of multiselect.

I later tried using a bluetooth keyboard with touch pad and that works. In this example I selected a second file with Shift down, though could not open the context menu via track pad. Yet once selected I could tap-hold via screen and that looked like that:

So who’s going to go into this and maybe there already is some hidden feature for multiselect via touch UI?

[Valery_Kondakoff]

Please add [Bug] or [Feature] to your post title, then delete this line.

Platform

iOS

Obsidian Mobile version: v0.0.17(4)

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It is possible to highlight more than one note in File Explorer by tapping on item and hold.

Here is a video: https://www.dropbox.com/s/53i2eyqfbfzb8t1/RPReplay_Final1619596563.mov?dl=0

(iPadOS 14.6)

[Valery_Kondakoff]

This is still an issue in 1.0.0.14…
I hope this will be fixed before the release.

[aitransformed]

While using obsidian for PC, I can move multiple files using combining keyboard keys and mouse:
Shift + click selects a group. Alt + click selects the ones you click on. Then right click on one of the selected for the context menu.

The above is okay. But i want this in obsidian mobile as well.

[Jopp]

A solution could be to

1. tab hold a file, then select a new menu entry “select multiple files”
2. select a second file over/under the first selection to include all files in between.
3. At this point, the usual menu would pop up again and ask what to do with the selection.

Another way could be to use two fingers, but selecting files and folders with two fingers simultaneously might be difficult

[Svitman]

+1
Dear developers, please implement multiple selection feature.

[chrislou1961]

I really would love this feature!

[Sandwich_lord]

+1 I am struggling with the same issue.
The problem is the time interval of tap and hold to distinguish the action of drag and drop, and opening the menu bar is kinda weird and unintuitive.
Ex. I wanted to opens the menu by holding the file but instead it responded as drag and drop or either opening the file.

I propose the developer team to at least implement the hover view so that I know when to unhold(in current us design, 1 out of 2, it responds as drag and drop or does nothing when try to tap and hold to activate the menu)

I think it would not take so much effort to do it.

Also there should be options to select the multiple files, since deleting files in iPad or mobile phone without key board is pain in the ass at the moment.

I hope that there’s a plugin to solve this issue…