Select All: Bulk-Edit Many Items in One Click
Editing one item at a time is fine when you're just adding tasks. But when your list has fifty things and you want to mark a dozen of them done — or push a whole batch of deadlines back a week — clicking each one is tedious. So we built a proper bulk-action system into the list page.
What's New
Above every list you'll now see a Select all checkbox. Click it (or click the per-item checkbox once you're in select mode) and a floating action bar appears at the top of your screen with everything you need to act on a batch of items at once:
- Complete — mark every selected item done
- Mark incomplete — re-open completed items
- Set date — assign a due date to every selected item, or clear the due date entirely
- Delete — remove items in bulk (with a confirmation prompt)
The bar stays pinned to the top of the viewport while you scroll, so you can see your selection count and your options no matter how long the list is.
Why We Built It
Three workflows came up over and over in feedback:
- End-of-week cleanup: marking a batch of finished tasks complete and then archiving them.
- Reschedule: a project slips and you need to push every task in a milestone forward by a few days.
- Pruning: dropping a bunch of items that are no longer relevant.
Doing any of these one row at a time was painful enough that people sometimes just left their lists messy. The new bulk actions make all three workflows fast.
How to Use It
Select items
Click the Select all checkbox above the items to select everything. Or click the checkbox on individual items to pick a subset — the master checkbox shows an indeterminate state when only some items are selected.
While you're in select mode, the per-item complete checkbox temporarily gives way to a select checkbox in the same spot. No double-checkboxes cluttering the row.
Apply an action
The action bar appears at the top of the screen as soon as you have at least one item selected:
- Complete and Mark incomplete apply instantly.
- Set date opens a small popover with a date/time field. Type or pick a date, click Apply, and every selected item gets that due date. Or click Clear date in the popover to wipe the due date from every selected item — useful when you've over-scheduled and want to reset.
- Delete asks you to confirm, then removes the items.
Cancel
Click the × at the right end of the bar to clear your selection and exit select mode.
How It Works Under the Hood
A single request to the server applies the chosen action to every selected item in one transaction — no per-row round-trips, so even hundreds of items go through in a fraction of a second. Selection happens entirely in the browser; only the final action talks to the server.
What's Next
A few related improvements we're considering based on the same idea:
- Bulk archive of selected items (today, only completed items archive in bulk via the existing Archive menu).
- Bulk move to a different list for logged-in users with multiple lists.
- A keyboard shortcut to enter select mode without reaching for the mouse.
If any of these (or something else) would change how you use your lists, send us a note. Bulk add was added because users asked for it; this one was too.
Happy organizing.