I am a new Dolphin user, and I can't figure out a simple way to open multiple files at once with mouse clicks.

I can select multiple files easily in Dolphin. However, I can't figure out how to open them all via mouse click (either single or double-click, depending on whether single-click-to-open is enabled). What happens instead is when I click on one of the selected files, the rest of the files are deselected, so only that file gets opened. To open them all at once, I can obviously right-click and choose open/open with, or I can press enter on the keyboard -- but is there a straightforward way to click-to-open (or double-click-to-open) multiple files at once?

This Dolphin behavior is contrary to how multiple-file selections work on most other file browsers, where a click on a file in an already-selected range does not automatically deselect the rest of the files. That Dolphin is different is of course not in itself a negative, but I'm not sure I see the ergonomic advantage in this case. I guess you save a click in the case that you want to deselect multiple files while at the same time selecting a single file from the previously-selected range? (But how common is that compared to trying to open all the selected files?)

Anyhow, is this behavior intentional -- or just an oversight? Are there other straightforward ways to open multiple files, aside from using the contextual menu or a keyboard shortcut? This seems like a pretty common file-browser operation to have buried in a context menu / keyboard shortcut...

Thanks for any tips / thoughts!

hmm.. trying out a couple different file managers (pcmanfm, nautilus, file lists in NetBeans 8.2), I'm finding that they consistently switch to single-select when you have multiple selected and then click on one of the selected files. (granted, I am a couple years behind, still being on Ubuntu 14.04). From my experience, the behavior in Dolphin matches the behavior that I've seen in a wide variety of file selection widgets (be they dedicated file managers, file selection dialogs, project/file views in IDEs or editors, etc.)

In which file managers have you seen the behavior you expect? (perhaps there are some that have changed their behavior in recent updates)

It would seem I was wrong about that being standard behavior! I had thought it was without doing my research.

OS X Finder:
- List view: single-click deselects range -- but AFTER the double-click delay, so that a double-click can still be recognized and open all the files in the range.
- Icon view: single-click doesn't deselect range, so double-click opens multiple files.

Windows Explorer: single-click deselects, so there actually is no way to open multiple files with mouse clicks. I had thought this was not the behavior of Windows, but I was wrong.

Anyhow, I guess the bigger question is whether the other file browsers provide a straightforward way to open multiple files at once with mouse-clicks? Or do they just directly copy the Windows behavior in this regard too?

Is opening multiple files at once a really rare task? Maybe I'm just an outlier in hoping for a simple and fast way to do this from the mouse...

I would guess that most file browsers on linux inherit the behavior (indirectly) from the Windows file browser (or its ancestors), while the behavior on OS X finder is relatively new (in the long term at least).

I would also guess that most people are used to just hitting Enter once they have the selection they want. (providing keyboard-only access is much more common than mouse-only access; though with touchscreen displays becoming common on laptops, that could be changing)

I think it would be worthwhile to suggest the feature over in the Brainstorm forum to gather additional feedback and support.