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With a list "select" widget with multiple selection allowed, how to enable the selection of multiple items with a touchscreen device?

  • Drag/drop or swipe cannot be used for selection, it is already used to scroll the scrollbar of the list

  • Click / tap cannot be used because this is used to select a new single item (see the UX in Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder)

  • Double-click / double-tap is already used to open the selected element (e.g. like in a file explorer)

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Important: my real use case is something close to a File Explorer list of files:

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Note: This is linked to Select multiple items with HTML <select> with a touchscreen but here it is about the general UX design rather than the code implementation.

Not a duplicate of What is the best UI for multi-selecting from a list? because the file-explorer-like UX is very different.

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  • It looks like an attempt to force a design for keyboard and mouse to work on touch devices. With already that many touch interactions possible it is easy for users to make a mistake causing only frustration. There is not much context given to tell if this is going to be a problem or what an alternative approach could be. Commented Apr 19, 2024 at 7:23

2 Answers 2

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  • Click and hold to change the item's state to selected, once the item changes the state to selected:

    1. Click other items to select them
    2. Or drag to select multiple items
    3. Click and hold a selected item to deselect
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Very similar questions have been asked before. I would flag your question as a duplicate if I could link 2 questions when doing so.

This question quickly covers how iOS and android address multi-select: Does touch based mobile phone browsers support multi selection of list?

This question has a lot more discussion around how to handle the UI for multi-select: What is the best UI for multi-selecting from a list?

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  • These linked questions (especially the 2nd) don't really apply to the real use case mentioned in my question: file-explorer-like UX. Commented Apr 18, 2024 at 16:03
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    @Basj Both links include multiple solutions to your use case that are consistently used in many ways in the real world. Look at Samsung's My Files, or Google's Drive app, or ASTRO File Manager. All these apps have touchscreen File Explorers that use behaviour patterns shown in the links I sent you. Commented Apr 18, 2024 at 18:03

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