Photo: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
A hidden gesture on iPhone and iPad lets you quickly select a bunch of items in a list — kind of like Command-A (⌘A) for Select All on a Mac. I use it all the time to select a bunch of emails to archive, a bunch of reminders to rearrange, a batch of files to sort, etc.
Once you learn this two-finger swipe gesture, you’ll be using it everywhere. It’s great for working with your phone on the go. Watch our quick video or keep reading.
Two-finger Select All gesture on iPhone
Who says an iPhone isn’t a real computer? You can get a lot of real work done on your iPhone and iPad. However, sometimes the lack of an always available shortcut keyboard gets in the way.
On an iPhone, you might think, “I wish I could press Command-A or hold Shift to select all these options. But there’s actually another way.”
In any list view, you can swipe with two fingers to instantly start selecting items. It will immediately change to selection mode, so you can tap more items to select or deselect. The application toolbar can also change, allowing you to move, delete, copy, or do something with the selection.
GIF: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Where does the Select All gesture work on iPhone?
The Select All gesture on iPhone works in different apps.
- At Apple E-mail a quick swipe with two fingers allows you to select many messages at once, so you can quickly throw them into the archive or trash. It’s much faster than picking them one by one.
- IN A reminderyou can quickly select a bunch of messages and reorder them, move them to different categories, move them to another list, and more.
- Tea News the list allows you to select messages by swiping with two fingers and mark them as read/unread or delete.
- IN Commentyou can use a gesture to select different notes and sort them into folders, mark them or delete them.
- Tea Files the application allows bulk selection of items. You can then quickly share, duplicate, move, delete, tag, compress, or create a new folder containing the items you’ve selected.
- IN Phone application, you can mark missed calls and voicemails as read or delete them.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wherever you see a list of items, you can try selecting multiple items in the list using the two-finger swipe gesture on your iPhone.
One more thing…
You can combine the two-finger swipe gesture with another hidden iPhone gesture. With your other hand, while swiping, tap the status bar at the top of the screen to instantly go to the top of the view. If you started selecting at the bottom, everything in between will be selected. That makes this quick trick even faster.
More tips for iPhone pro
D. Griffin Jones is a writer, podcaster and video producer for Cult of Mac. Griffin has been an avid computer enthusiast since he got his first PC in 2002 – but hasn’t turned back since he got a Mac in 2008. His graphic and web design skills, along with video and podcast editing, have been self-taught for over 20 years. Griffin has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and has written several (unpublished) apps for Mac and iOS. His vintage computer collection consists of more than 40 desktops, laptops, PDAs and devices dating back to the early 1980s. All of these creative and technical skills, along with a deep knowledge of Apple history, he brings to his work for Cult of Mac.
