Drag and drop
Select photos like in Finder, drag them onto folders, albums and the trash, and bring files in from your desktop.
You can do most things with photos by dragging them. It works the way Finder does on a Mac. Every drag also has a button or key that does the same thing, so you never have to drag.
Select photos
This works in every photo grid: your timeline, a folder, an album, the trash and the sorting view. Selecting, dragging and select-all all work in the library chosen in the switcher, whether that is your personal library or a family library. See Switch libraries.
- Click a photo to select it. Click another to select that one instead.
- ⌘-click (Ctrl-click on Windows) adds a photo to your selection or takes it out.
- Shift-click selects every photo between the last one you clicked and this one.
- ⌘A (Ctrl+A) selects every photo in the view, including the ones that haven’t loaded yet. If the view is too large to select in one go, you’ll be asked to narrow it down. If Magpie can’t fetch every photo, nothing changes: your selection stays as it was, and you see Couldn’t select every photo here. Your selection hasn’t changed. with Try again.
- Esc clears the selection.
The bar shows how many are selected, for example 12 selected.
To open a photo full screen, double-click it, or move to it and press Enter or Space. On a phone or tablet, a tap opens the photo, unless you have turned on Select. Then a tap selects.
Draw a selection box
Press on an empty space, between or beside the photos, and drag. Every photo the box touches is selected. Hold ⌘ or Shift while you draw to add to what you already have selected. The page scrolls when the box reaches the top or bottom edge, so one box can cover more than one screen. Press Esc to cancel the box.
A drag that starts on a photo moves photos. A drag that starts on empty space draws a box.
Drag photos
Press on a selected photo and drag. You carry every selected photo. A small stack of photos with a count follows the pointer. If the photo you press on isn’t selected yet, you carry just that one.
When the pointer is over a place that can take the photos, it lights up and says what will happen, for example “Add 25 to 2019 › Disney”. A place that can’t take them stays plain. Let go to drop. Press Esc to cancel.
| Drag photos onto | What happens |
|---|---|
| A folder in the sidebar | They are added to the folder. Open a folder and drag from it to another folder, and they are moved instead: they leave the first folder. Hold Option (Alt on Windows) to add them instead of moving them. |
| An album in the sidebar | They are added at the end of the album. |
| Trash in the sidebar | They go to the trash. It appears while you drag. |
| Other photos in an open album | They are put in that place in the album. |
Dropping on a folder never takes a photo out of another folder, except a move from a folder’s own page. See Folders and Albums.
Drag a collapsed folder in the sidebar’s list and hover over another for half a second, and it opens, so you can reach the folders inside it. The sidebar and the grid scroll when you hold the pointer near their edges.
Drag folders
Drag a folder in the sidebar onto another folder to put it inside. Drag it onto the Folders heading to put it at the top level. It takes its subfolders and photos along. See Sorting into folders.
Bring in files from your desktop
Drag photos or folders from your desktop (Finder on a Mac, File Explorer on Windows) onto any page in the app. Let go when you see Drop photos or folders to add them to your library.
- Loose files are uploaded.
- A folder is imported with its folders kept, as if you had chosen Keep my folders in Upload a whole folder. The dropped folder becomes a folder of yours, with its subfolders inside it.
A panel shows how it is going, for example 12 of 40 added…. You need to be allowed to upload to the library, and to have accepted the current policies, as for any upload.
Undo
After a drop, an Undo message appears for 10 seconds. It stays while the pointer is on it. Click Undo to put things back. Undoing only reverses what that drop did: a photo that was already in the folder stays there.
The sorting view also keeps a history of your drags. See Sorting into folders.
Without dragging
- Select photos, then click Add to folder…, Add to album… or Move to trash.
- Open a folder, select photos, and use Move to… to move them to another folder. Type to find the folder, press Enter to choose the first match.
- ⌘⇧A (Ctrl+Shift+A) opens the Add to… list and ⌘⇧M (Ctrl+Shift+M) opens Move to…. If your browser keeps those keys, use the buttons.
- Screen readers hear when you pick something up, which place is under the pointer, and when you drop.
Who can drop where
Viewers can select photos, but no place lights up for them and a drop does nothing. Adding to folders needs a role that can organize photos. Albums and the trash need an editor or owner. When you can’t move photos to the trash, Trash says so while you drag.