How to select multiple games ?

[medwatt]

My question is probably naive, but how do I select more than one game such as those highlighted in the image below so that I can delete or copy them to another database ?

[whelanh]

That is not a naive question at all. You have correctly identified that currently there is no way to select multiple games with the mouse key (plus Ctrl or Shift). I think that would be nice behavior to have and I will work to implement that. I will keep you updated on progress.

[medwatt]

@whelanh, thanks for the reply. Indeed, this would be a useful feature to have.

Another unrelated issue, if I may add, is the need to close the engine window before the "compact database" functionality works. This is a bit irritating because it messes up with the layout of the windows (I have a specific layout as you can see from the attached image in the first post). Of course, I can just reset layout to the default, but seems like an unnecessary step when the vanilla scid doesn't require closing the engine window before the "compact database" functionality works. Can you comment on this ?

[whelanh]

I will respond to your last question, but as to your first request: in the latest release (v5.1.2.87), you can now use Ctrl + click to select specific games in the Gamelist Window. You can also use Shift+click to select multiple contiguos games in the Gamelist Window (both normal "select" actions a user might expect).

To actually do something with your selections, you then need to click the right mouse button to get an "actions menu", from which you can select to mark the games for deleting (see "delete (4)" example below), or, to export just the selected games (see "Export Selected Games..." in the image below).

I did some testing and it seemed to work the way I expected it to, but I would appreciate you testing it as well. I think your idea is a nice improvement.

Regarding the second question about having to close the Engine Window. This behavior change in scidCommunity was a result of a Windows user who said his database was corrupted when he tried to compact it with the Engine Window open. I don't know if his engine was running, or just open. So it seemed an easy precaution to guard against.

However, as a Linux user I've never had this database corruption issue and you are the second person to give feedback that they are not crazy about this new behavior. I am willing to revert to the old behavior if the sentiment is strong enough. I get your use case and how it would mess up your layout. Let me know how strongly you feel about this.

[medwatt]

@whelanh Thank you very much for this. It's indeed a very useful feature.
From just a quick testing, I noticed that selected games get unselected during scrolling. See the video below.

2026-04-05.00-03-42.mp4

As for the second issue, I'm not compacting a database every day, but it's a bit irritating that every time I need to do so, I need to close the window, compact the database, and then restore the layout.

Have you investigated if there's any shared code between compacting a database and having the engine running because it is very strange that having the engine window open has anything to do with compacting a database ?

The best solution would be to maybe run scid on a windows vm and try to reproduce the issue so that you can understand why this is happening and have a proper fix, because the current fix seems like a hack.

[whelanh]

Thanks for testing and the catch regarding the non-persistent selections after scrolling. This fix will require a bit of code (it turns out the game list is a "virtual list" that only consists of what you can see in the current window), but I will make choices persistent in the next release.

Regarding the second issue, I appreciate your thoughts. I can tell you after trying to chase down issues that are idiosyncratic to Windows, that indeed Windows handles engine communication differently than Linux. Nevertheless I am leaning towards reverting the "no open engine window" policy. I will give it a bit more thought. I will keep you updated.

[medwatt]

Thanks ! Looking forward to the next release.

[whelanh]

v5.1.2.88 should address both of the issues you raised of persistent selection even when scrolling and the reversion of the "no compaction" policy if the Engine windows are open.

Thanks again for your ideas, testing and help. Please let me know if you find any other program behavior that seems non-optimal.

[medwatt]

Thanks once again. However, there may still be an issue. Games are selected even without pressing the ctrl button. In the video below, I am simply clicking (not holding the ctrl button).

2026-04-05.11-02-08.mp4

[whelanh]

Thank you once again. Next version (building now), will fix this and reserve multi-selection to Ctrl (and Shift) clicks.

[medwatt]

Another issue I noticed is that in this version of scid, all select markers are removed except the circle one. The screenshot below is from vanilla scid.

[whelanh]

Can you remind me how you get to that mainSelectMarker window (it's not a feature I use)?

[medwatt]

2026-04-05.11-34-40.mp4

[whelanh]

Regarding the limited number of markers you are seeing, that is not a bug. You must have "Lichess/ChessBase Format For Annotations" checked in your Options/Preferences/Moves selections (see image below). If you uncheck that, you should see the full set of symbols. There are fewer annotations supported by Lichess than by Scid.

[medwatt]

There's also this slightly weird issue. In vanilla scid, when the number of games is smaller than the window size, games before the selected game are not hidden.

2026-04-05.11-36-49.mp4

In this version, they are.

2026-04-05.11-37-16.mp4

[whelanh]

Your video is very helpful, but I can't duplicate the behavior you are getting. It tried with a database of only 9 games and I'm not seeing anything being hidden. What release type of scidCommunity are you using (Windows, one of the produced deb or rpms, from COPR, AUR, Flatpak)?

[medwatt]

I am using the one on the aur.

By hiding, I don't mean it is not there. It is just just that the currently selected game becomes the one shown in the window and vertical scrollbars appear even though there is enough space for all the games to be shown together.

[medwatt]

@whelanh, I updated to the latest version today and last issue I described seems to be fixed.

[whelanh]

@medwatt I apologize it took me so long to fix. I was trying to fix another game list ordering issue and finally was also able to address the issue you were experiencing.