Hold a chat in the list and it becomes selected rather than opened. Tap three more and the toolbar at the top will pin, mute, archive or delete all of them at once.
It is the fastest way to fix an inbox that has got away from you, and the only part that needs care is the last of those four verbs.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Select several chats and act on all of them in one step.
- check_circle Reset a cluttered chat list in about a minute.
- check_circle Use the undo window that appears after a bulk action.
- check_circle Know what deleting a chat actually deletes, before you do it to twelve of them.
The toolbar that appears at the top is the whole feature — everything it offers applies to every chat you have ticked.
checklist Selection mode
Press and hold any chat and the list changes state: a checkmark appears on that row, the others become tappable to add, and a set of actions appears along the top. Nothing is opened and nothing has happened yet.
The actions are the same ones each chat has individually. Doing them in bulk is not a different feature, it is the same feature applied to a selection — which is why it is safe to use for everything except deletion.
The four actions
Three are reversible in a tap. The fourth is not the same kind of thing at all.
folder Archiving in bulk
notifications_off Muting in bulk
push_pin Pinning in bulk
delete Deleting in bulk
The habit worth forming: bulk archive, never bulk delete.
settings Resetting an inbox in a minute
- Enter selection mode Press and hold any chat. On desktop, right-click gives the same actions and Ctrl or Shift extends the selection.
- Work from the bottom The oldest chats are the ones you have stopped reading. Select as you scroll.
- Mute, then archive Two passes over the same selection. The order matters, because muted chats stay archived.
- Pin the handful you use every day Small number. The point is that the top of the list means something.
- Leave the rest Search finds anything you archived. There is no need to decide about it now.
This page is the toolbar. The curriculum step is the system to use it in: keeping an inbox at a size you can read, what to archive and when, and using unread marks as a list of things to come back to.
At a glance
- 1Select many
Long-press a chat and tick others to act on them together.
- 2Undo window
A banner lets you undo a bulk action for a few seconds.
- 3Archive, don't delete
Bulk delete can remove history for both sides.
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