Use the steps below to select more than one file at a time in Google Drive.
- Sign into Google Drive.
You can go directly to https://drive.google.com instead of opening Google Drive through Gmail or another Google app.
- Click the first file that you want to select.
If you have the “My Drive” option selected at the left side of the window then this will display all of your Google Drive files.
- Hold down the “Ctrl” key on your keyboard, then click the rest of the files.
If you’re on a Mac then you would hold down the “Command” key instead.
- Perform the desired action on the selected files.
The steps in this guide were performed in the desktop version of the Google Chrome Web browser, but will also work in other desktop browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge.
Note that there is a toggle at the top-right of the list of Google Drive files that lets you switch between list and grid view. List view typically lets you view more files on the screen at once, so it likely to be the most convenient way to view files for this purpose.
Once you’ve completed these steps and selected multiple files, you can do things like download all of those files, move them to a Google Drive folder, or delete them.
There are a couple other ways to select more than one file in Google Drive.
You can click on a file and hold down your mouse button, then drag the mouse to select files either directly above or directly below the selected file.
Alternatively you can click on a file, press Shift on your keyboard and hold it down, then click on another file. This will select all of the files between the first file you clicked and the last file you clicked.
Both of these other options are more situational, but can be helpful to quickly select a lot of files that are right next to one another.
Frequently Asked Questions
Open the Google Drive app, then select the “Files” tab at the bottom-right of the screen. Tap and hold on the first file you wish to select, which will place a blue check mark next to it. You can then tap on each other file you wish to select.
Hold down the Ctrl key, then click each file you want to delete. Right-click on one of the selected files, then choose the “Remove” option.
Click the “New” button at the top-left of the window, then choose “File upload.” Browse to the location with the files to upload, then hold down the Ctrl key, click each file to upload, then click the “Open” button. This is a fairly convenient way to upload files to the cloud quickly and efficiently.
Hold down the Ctrl key, then click on each file you wish to download. Right-click on one of the selected files, then choose the “Download” option. This will place all of the files into a zip file, which will then download to your computer.
Click the “Search options” arrow at the right side of the search field, choose “Photos & images,” then click “Search.” You can then press Ctrl + A to select all of the photos. You could use a similar method to select other types of files, such as all y our Google Docs files, or all your PDFs.
See also
- How to delete a file from Google Drive
- How to sign into Google Drive
- How to recover a file from Google Drive trash
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.
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