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Mar 12, 2024 3:19 PM UTC
Question

Drag deselection not working anymore

Once having a multiple selection I used to drag select from outside to deselect the items I did not want in my selection.

This was specifically useful for me and now that it’s gone I spend much more time clicking individual items to deselect, and in some cases that’s not actually doable to do having too many items involved.

This decision is making the tool worse than it was. Is this a bug or a permanent decision?

This topic has been closed for replies.

15 replies

Design16
Mar 13, 2024 10:51 AM UTC

I am having the same issue and completely agree. No idea why this change has been made it has really messed up my workflow when altering designs.

I can deslelect items when I click and drag from inside the frame but Can’t when clicking and dragging from outside the frame.

Really hope they revert this change.

Mar 13, 2024 1:20 PM UTC

They implemented lots of questionable changes in the last update, and I think this is one of them. There are lots of bugs/changes in other sections as well. I wish I hadn’t updated my Figma.

djv
Figmate
Community Support
Mar 18, 2024 9:24 PM UTC

Hey All, thanks for flagging this!

We’ve passed it onto our team to investigate and work on a fix.

Peter_Hoglund
Mar 25, 2024 10:47 AM UTC

This is such a weird change, completely breaks my workflow and “hand-memory”. It is crucial to be able to drag-deselect for deselecting hidden or hard-to-reach objects.

djv
Figmate
Community Support
Mar 26, 2024 9:32 PM UTC

Sorry for the trouble, @Peter_Hoglund!

Our team filed a bug report and are working on getting this fixed as soon as possible.

Barry
Oct 3, 2024 4:13 PM UTC

Is there any sign of this bug being fixed? makes it extremely difficult to work on large files.

djv
Figmate
Community Support
Oct 4, 2024 3:27 PM UTC

Hey @Barry, our team rolled the special case made where shift-drag-select preserves the selection if there is only one region back in April.

Instead, it should now subtract the objects just as before.

If this isn’t the case for you, what OS are you using? And are you using Figma in the browser or the desktop app? Can you please provide a screen recording of what’s happening?

Aguiar_Leonardo_extern
Active Member
Jan 14, 2025 1:06 PM UTC

This isn't working for me either. I am on a MacBookPro M1. Tried it in the Figma app and in Chrome. I have multiple layers with variables applied to them. I use a variable finder plugin that is able to select layers that are using the same variable. I want to deselect some of those layers that the plugin selected for me and I can't drag deselect them. Figma ends up selecting more layers when I drag around the selected layers I want to deselect.

y_toku
Figmate
Community Support
Jan 15, 2025 4:05 AM UTC

Hi ​@Aguiar_Leonardo_extern 

 

Thanks for reaching out. 

Could you try the troubleshooting below and try again please?

  • Close any Figma tabs you're not using
  • Browser: Force-quit and open Figma in a new browser window.
  • Desktop App: Force-quit the Figma Desktop app and restart it. If the issue persists, try clearing the cache.

It looks working for me as following: 

 

If the issue persists, could you share the screen recording please? Hope to investigate further!

 

Thanks,

Toku

Aguiar_Leonardo_extern
Active Member
Jan 15, 2025 1:51 PM UTC

Thank you for the help. There might be an issue with tabs that I am not using. When I log in on Chrome, Figma shows me at the top of the right panel that other instances of my user are also logged into the same file. Is there a way to logout all instances that my user might have still logged in through other access channels? Also what is the correct keyboard commands for executing the drag deselect?