Explorer Multi-Select

Selecting several files and folders in Obsidian's File explorer is hard. On desktop you get Alt-click and Shift-click, a Shift+Up/Down range that only ever grows, no Select all, and one dialog per item when you delete. On a phone or a tablet you get no multi-select at all.

Explorer Multi-Select fixes that inside the File explorer you already use, rather than replacing it with a view of its own. It adds a selection mode with checkboxes and an action bar for touch, the missing keyboard keys, commands that select by extension, glob pattern, property value or the explorer's filter, a count in the status bar, and one confirmation for a batch delete. Moving, bookmarking and link updating stay core's own, so they behave exactly as they always have.

More screenshots

Demo vault

The documentation is an interactive demo vault. Every feature has a note that explains what it does and why you would want it, with buttons that select rows, run the commands and flip the settings, so you can watch it happen.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Explorer Multi-Select: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading explorer-multi-select-demo-vault.zip from the Releases. It unzips into a single explorer-multi-select-demo-vault-<version> folder.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

• Selection mode puts a checkbox on every row and an action bar under the tree, with Move, Bookmark, Delete, More actions, Select all, Invert selection and Done. A tap toggles a row instead of opening it. On mobile, a long-press turns it on. 01 Selection mode
• Keyboard selection: Ctrl+A / Cmd+A selects the focused folder's rows, Space toggles the focused row, and a Shift+Up / Shift+Down range shrinks when you reverse direction. 02 Keyboard
• A selection count in the status bar, such as 12 files, 3 folders. 03 Selection count
• Select by rule: commands that select by extension, by glob pattern, by property value, or every file the explorer's filter shows, in the focused folder or everything under it, and a command that inverts the selection. 04 Select by rule
• One confirmation for a batch delete, from the Delete key, the action bar or core's context menu. Each item still goes through Obsidian's own delete, so the Deleted files setting holds. 05 Batch delete
• Two opt-in click settings: Ctrl/Cmd-click toggles a row, and a plain click keeps the selection while it opens a file. 06 Click settings

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin are hidden.

To show them, run the following command in the DevTools Console:

window.DEBUG.enable('explorer-multi-select');

For more details, refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

My other Obsidian resources

See my other Obsidian resources.

License

© Michael Naumov