Hi there!
This is a vaguely-worded idea so searching didn’t bring me to any similar ideas.
I’m currently working on finally organizing my “Other Videos” library with Playlists and ran into some strange absences in the organizational features.
If I view by folder and select a single item, I have “Deselect All” but no “Select All!” Seems simple enough and would make my life a heck of a lot easier if it was added.
In line with that, some of my archives have many sub-folders and I would love to be able to just select the sub-folders myself to add the contents of multiple folders at a time to a playlist, as well.
I have seen the multi-select as a “fix” for this cited a few times, but when I have a few hundred files in a library that I wanted added to a playlist holding Ctrl and clicking on those few hundred files just doesn’t cut it. I know you can create a playlist of a library by selecting nothing and just telling it to make a playlist, but that playlist doesn’t act like a normal one, i.e. you can’t remove any files from it; it’s just basically a shortcut to queue the entire library.
I don’t imagine this is something that is in high demand for the majority of PLEX users, but for those of us with large libraries it’s a real pain. Either have a “Select All” button that will check everything and then allow us to uncheck those few files we don’t want included or make the Library Playlist created when no files are selected act as a regular playlist so we can remove those files we don’t want. Pretty please.
The subfolder request would also be nice, but not as essential in my mind. Instead of creating one library that has several subcategories I had to create a separate library for each one. It works but just creates a large amount of libraries when a few libraries that could be split into smaller ones would be a lot nicer and cleaner.
You don’t just have Ctrl-click. You can select all by selecting the first item in the list, going to the end of the list, and Shift-click the last item. That selects everything in between.
I’m not arguing against a ‘Select all’ button, just offering an existing alternative.
And, actually, with the recent changes to the UI, you don’t have to Ctrl-click every item. Once one item is selected, you can click each additional item without Ctrl. That goes for unchecking as well.
That type of playlist is known as a ‘smart playlist.’ You’re right, it can’t be edited, but any new items added to the library that meet the conditions of the smart playlist will automatically be added to the playlist.
I never thought to try shift clicking the first and last items; I’m used to Ctrl + A and then Ctrl clicking what I don’t want in Windows, thanks for that! It’s not nearly as intuitive as a “Select All” option, but definitely a lot easier than clicking each one.
Yes I’m aware, I just found Ctrl + A much easier and quicker. The point I was making was that since I wasn’t in the habit if shift-clicking I never thought to try it in PLEX.
Hmm, where is this feature??? This is years back and it is still missing. Why a deselect all, and no select all? This is super trivial to do.
I hate to have to use the workaround with shift click, as some people pointed out, it will not select all if you have a very long list and use first item shift click last item.
I’m a relatively new plex user and find the lack of a “Select All” option sort of incomprehensible. In virtually any file explorer I can think of, this is pretty basic functionality with either ctrl+a, command+a, or at the very least a UI element that will do this for the current directory. And I get that plex isn’t technically a “file explorer” but when a user is browsing a library explicitly through the folders view, basic file explorer functionality is exactly what a user is expecting. I bounced around the UI for several minutes thinking I must just be overlooking this.
“Shift select” certainly does the job but it’s cumbersome and unnecessarily tedious if one must do this for multiple folders.
What kills me about this is that once one file is selected, a top-bar status shows up with the option to “Deselect All.” I mean, why not just add a “Select All” button right there?
