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I have a multi-select dropdown like this:

[-] All
–––––––––––––––––––––
[x] Department 1
[ ] Department 2
[ ] Department 3
…
[ ] Department n

In design review, an engineer asked if there's a UX pattern for quickly selecting a single option after multiple are selected?

Starting with this:

[-] All
–––––––––––––––––––––
[x] Department 1
[x] Department 2
[x] Department 3
…
[ ] Department n

And getting to this, in one click:

[-] All
–––––––––––––––––––––
[x] Department 1
[ ] Department 2
[ ] Department 3
…
[ ] Department n

Obviously, a three-click solution would be to

  1. Select all (the indeterminate "[-] All" option)
  2. De-select all
  3. Select a single department

But we're looking for a single-click solution!

I asked this of Google (see below), but I believe Gemini hallucinated negatively, because I tried its suggested shortcut keys in Chrome Gmail and macOS Finder and didn't have success.

Google's AI summary, suggesting that a Mac user can press and hold the Command key while clicking to single-select an option

NN/g highlighted the ability to de/select options with the Shift/Command keys, but with my testing, that seems specific to de-selecting.

2 Answers 2

1

In Adobe applications there is an option to display only one layer hiding the others: Alt click on the eye icon:

Clicking the eye icon next to any layer on the Layers panel will hide/show the layer. Option -click (Mac) | Alt -click (Win) the eye icon in the Layers panel to toggle visibility of all other layers.

Result Windows Mac OS
Show/hide all other currently visible layers Alt-click the eye icon Option-click the eye icon

Adobe

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On desktop, I've seen double click used to do this. Alt+click as well is a common option.

If you application will be used on mobile, the select/deselect all option at the top serves the same purpose, and I am not aware of any established patterns for selecting only one after multiple are selected.

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