NewTwos

Things

Select many things at once

iPhoneiPadAndroidWebMacWindowsLinuxWatchUpdated 2026-08-18

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, tap an action, then tap Done.

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

There is no range gesture on touch. Tap the ones you want, or use Select all and then tap to deselect the few you do not. On an iPad with a keyboard attached, the desktop shortcuts work.

Select all

Select all means everything currently visible. If completed things are collapsed, or a heading is collapsed, or a tag filter is on, those things are not included. Expand first if you meant to catch them. This is the single most common surprise in selection mode.

Getting out

Leaving selection mode never changes anything. Nothing is committed until you pick an action.

What you can do to a selection

ActionMacWindows and Linux
Complete/uncomplete⌘DCtrl+D
Cancel/uncancel⌘⇧DCtrl+Shift+D
Star/unstar⌘⇧SCtrl+Shift+S
Move to list⌘⇧MCtrl+Shift+M
Move a copy to list⌘⇧⌥MCtrl+Shift+Alt+M
Duplicate thing⌘⌃⌥DCtrl+Alt+D
Move to Today⌘⇧OCtrl+Shift+O
Move to Tomorrow⌘⇧PCtrl+Shift+P
Share⌘ECtrl+E
Join⌘JCtrl+J
Split⌘⇧JCtrl+Shift+J
Ask AI⌘⌥ACtrl+Alt+A
Move thing to top⌘⇧⌥↑Ctrl+Shift+Alt+↑
Move thing to bottom⌘⇧⌥↓Ctrl+Shift+Alt+↓
Delete⌫⌫
Indent⌘]Ctrl+]
Outdent⌘[Ctrl+[
Copy text to clipboard⌘CCtrl+C
Add hashtag⌘⇧TCtrl+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

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 NewTwos. 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. NewTwos 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

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 only caught some of them. Something is hidden. Completed things may be collapsed, a heading may be collapsed, or a tag filter may be on. Expand everything first.

Move is greyed out on a shared list. You have view access, not edit access. The list's owner can change your role in its share settings.

Alt and drag moved instead of cloning. Clone is part of NewTwos 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.