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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?

14 replies

Design16
  • 1 reply
  • March 13, 2024

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.


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
  • 4943 replies
  • March 18, 2024

Hey All, thanks for flagging this!

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


Peter_Hoglund

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
  • 4943 replies
  • March 26, 2024

Sorry for the trouble, @Peter_Hoglund!

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


Barry
  • 1 reply
  • October 3, 2024

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


djv
Figmate
  • Community Support
  • 4943 replies
  • October 4, 2024

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

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
  • 2545 replies
  • January 15, 2025

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: 

https://www.loom.com/share/470f64c6815c413db202ac5b1739958b?sid=cacd4e6b-8faa-4a3e-9739-6d141c111af8

 

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

 

Thanks,

Toku


Aguiar_Leonardo_extern

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?

 

 


y_toku
Figmate
  • Community Support
  • 2545 replies
  • January 16, 2025

Hey @Aguiar_Leonardo_extern, thanks for your reply!

To deselect specific objects, try this:

  1. Select all the objects you don't want to select.
  2. Hold down the Shift key and drag your mouse.

This should deselect the objects within the drag area.

 

Regarding logging out all instances, I might be misunderstanding your question, but I don't believe there's a way to do that directly.

Let me know if this helps!

 

Thanks,

Toku


Aguiar_Leonardo_extern

Holding shift while dragging to deselect layers that are already selected does work but only if those already selected layers aren't next to any other layers. This is not the behavior I am looking for.

If we have already selected layers and they are next to layers that aren't selected and we want to deselect some of the selected layers, if we shift drag over the selected layers they will correctly be deselected but if that drag movement goes over any of the unselected layers then they will be added to the selection.

I am looking for exclusively deselecting drag behavior without any adding to selection behavior.


Saurabh Nagar

I am facing the issue, where neither the normal drag selection or Shift+drag selection is working. It’s so weird that it works at some places and ignoring other frames, sometimes it works fine and most of the times, it doesn’t, surely looks like an app bug (I am using mac m4 24 gb), super irritating. Affecting my whole speed by 10x. Please fix this issue asap

Updated : prev it was working in browser, not that also stopped working


Gerardo Martinez Rivera

Im having the problem that I can select some objects by dragging, but some are not selected! I restarded figma, logged out, tried on browser, on native mac app and nothing! Its so irritating. And no, the objects are not locked or in groups or anything. 

Objects not being selected when dragging
Objects being selected by dragging

 


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