Nine ways apps let you pick several things, what each costs, and what this app does against them.
Where this landed. Select, then tap, is what shipped, and the destructive actions live inside that mode.
The apps here are the ones shaped like this one: you make the work inside them, and then you come back to a library of your own pieces. Procreate, Concepts, GoodNotes and Adobe Fresco, plus what the system itself offers any grid. Every frame is 393pt wide, the width of the phone, so a target that looks small here is small in the hand, and every claim comes from Apple's documentation or the app's own handbook rather than from memory: these gestures move between releases.
Each one is three separate questions, and an app can answer them with three different gestures. How you get into the state, how you add and remove while you are in it, and how you get out.
| Method | Enter | Select | Exit |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Select button, then tap what you want | Tap Select in the bar. | Tap each piece. The mark fills, and tapping again empties it. | Tap Done, or finish by tapping an action. |
| Sweep a finger across the thumbnails | Nothing of its own: the mode has to be on already. | Drag one finger over the pieces, along the axis the grid does not scroll. | Lifting the finger ends the sweep, not the mode. Done ends the mode. |
| Drag two fingers across, with no mode at all | The gesture is the way in. Two fingers down puts the view into the mode by itself. | Keep dragging. Drag back over chosen pieces to release them, scroll, and take more. | Done. Lifting the fingers leaves the mode running so more can be taken. |
| Hold one, tap the rest onto it | Press and hold one piece, and keep holding. | Tap the others with the second hand. They gather under the held finger. | Drop the pile somewhere, or let go and it falls back. |
| A mark on every item, all the time | Tap the mark on any piece. Selecting and entering are the same tap. | Tap more marks. Tapping a filled one releases it. | Release the last piece and the mode ends on its own, or tap an action. |
| Press and hold one, then tap the rest | Hold one piece for about half a second. | After that, plain taps add and remove. | Back, or releasing the last piece. |
| Drag a box around them | Begin a drag on empty space. | Whatever the rectangle covers is taken, and it updates as the finger moves. | Lift. What was caught stays caught until it is acted on. |
| Drag what you want into a tray | Drag the first piece into the tray. | Drag more in. Dragging one back out removes it. | Act on the tray, or empty it. The tray is a place, so leaving it is deliberate. |
| Skip selection: act on one item where it sits | There is no state to enter. | Nothing is selected. The action applies to the piece you swiped. | The piece slides back, or the action closes it. |
Procreate, Adobe Fresco, GoodNotes
Tapping Select turns the library into a mode. Every piece grows a mark, tapping one fills it in, and a bar of actions appears. Fresco puts Select beside the sorting options in Your files; GoodNotes hides it one level down, under the four-square menu as Select Items.
Procreate, and the system frameworks
Once the mode is on, dragging one finger over thumbnails takes them as it goes. Procreate describes it as lightly swiping a finger across the ones you want. Apple allows the same thing, on the axis the grid does not scroll: in a grid that scrolls up and down, a finger dragged sideways keeps selecting.
Any grid or list built on the system frameworks, since iOS 13
Two fingers dragged over items selects them, and the view enters edit mode by itself. Apple is explicit that the items need not be next to each other: take a few, scroll, take more. Dragging two fingers back over chosen items releases them.
Concepts, GoodNotes, Procreate
Press and hold a thumbnail and keep holding. With the other hand, tap the others, and they gather under the held finger as a stack you can then drop somewhere. Procreate uses the same idea to build stacks: drag one piece onto another and they merge.
Nijimi now, and most upload pickers on the web
Every piece carries a small target of its own at rest. Tapping it selects that piece and turns the mode on in the same motion; tapping the piece itself still opens it.
Google Photos, Gmail, most of Android
Holding a piece for half a second turns the mode on and takes that piece. After that, plain taps add and remove, so the hold is only the way in.
Desktop file managers, some iPad canvases
Starting a drag on empty space pulls out a rectangle, and everything it covers is taken.
Drag and drop pickers, Files on iPad
Pieces are dragged to a shelf at the bottom, which holds them until you do something with them. The tray is the selection, and it is a place rather than a state.
Procreate, Adobe Fresco, Mail
Swiping a thumbnail sideways slides it aside and shows its own actions. Procreate gives Share, Duplicate and Delete that way; Fresco puts the same list behind an ellipsis under each thumbnail. No selection happens at all.
The gesture is only half of it. The other half is what a chosen sheet looks like, and the only test that counts is whether it reads against a painting rather than against a grey rectangle. Each pair below is a sheet at rest and the same sheet chosen, at the size the grid draws them.
Photos, Files, Notes, Procreate
An empty circle sits in the corner of everything once the mode is on, and fills with a tick when chosen. This is the mark people have been trained on for a decade.
Older Nijimi, some pickers
No badge at all. The chosen sheet is outlined in a heavy dark border.
Google Photos, many Android pickers
The chosen sheet is veiled and inset slightly, with a small tick in the corner.
Nijimi, on the colour card
The chosen sheet rises on its own shadow, the way the colour on the brush stands out of the palette. No badge at all.
Nijimi, now
A fold line in the corner at rest; the corner turns down in dark when chosen.
Many upload pickers
The chosen sheets are numbered as you take them, so the order is part of the mark.
The fold loses on the only test that matters: it has to be seen at a glance across a grid of paintings that already have dark corners of their own, and it is not. The mark that wins it is the one nobody has to learn, and the reason the system uses a saturated disc is that no watercolour makes that colour, so it never disappears into the work. Worth trying next: the circle, sized 24 and sitting in the corner at rest as an empty outline so the way in is still visible without a mode, and the sheet lifting as well when chosen, which is the language this app already uses on the palette.
| Gesture | What happens | Against the system |
|---|---|---|
| Tap the folded corner | Selects that sheet and turns the mode on | Close to the system circle, in a different shape |
| Press and hold a sheet | Starts a selection, and the sweep carries on from the same touch | A deviation: iOS keeps this gesture for the context menu |
| Drag one finger sideways, in the mode | Sweeps sheets in, from where the drag began to where the finger is | Matches what Apple documents for a vertically scrolling grid |
| Drag back over the run | Releases the sheets it passes back over | Matches the two-finger behaviour Apple describes |
| Drag two fingers | Selects without entering the mode first | Matches the system gesture |
| Swipe one sheet | Shows share, save and discard for that sheet alone | Matches Mail and Procreate |
| Tap Select | There is no Select button | A deviation, taken deliberately |
Two deviations are deliberate and worth keeping: the folded corner instead of a blue circle, because the sheets are paper and the mark should not sit on top of the work, and no Select button, because the fold is visible at rest and the mode is not a place you have to go. The third is the one to watch. Press and hold is the way in on Android, and on iOS that gesture belongs to the context menu, so anyone who holds a sheet expecting a preview gets a selection instead. If it trips people up, the fix is not to add a Select button back, it is to let the fold itself start the sweep.