Selecting & moving

A board is a tree: screens hold cards, cards hold text and icons. Selection walks that tree, and the same handful of gestures does it on every device — with a keyboard and a pointer where you have them.

One tap, then another

The first tap selects the top-level thing under your finger — the whole screen, card or group. That is on purpose: most of the time you want to move the screen, not the label on it.
Tap again on something inside and the selection goes straight to it, however deep it sits. On the Mac a dashed outline under the pointer shows what the next click selects.
Double-tap climbs to the parent of what is under your finger, a triple tap to its grandparent, up to the top-level element.
Double-tap a text to edit it at once, wherever the selection was; a drawing to draw in it, a chart to edit its data. A selected text also edits on the next tap, and a selected, empty Magic AI container offers Sketch it on its left half and Describe it on its right.
Tap empty space to deselect — or Esc on the Mac, the ✕ button on iPhone.

One tap selected the screen; the next reached the paragraph inside it — the small toolbar floats beside it.

Selecting several

Dragging a box straight away needs a pointer — a mouse or a trackpad, on the Mac or on an iPad. With a finger, a drag pans the board, so you long-press first and then drag.

Mac	⌘-click adds or removes one element at a time. Click and drag on empty space to draw a marquee. ⌘A selects everything in view.
iPad	Long-press empty space, then drag: everything the box touches is selected. With a keyboard, ⌘-tap and ⌘A work like on the Mac; with a trackpad, so does click-and-drag.
iPhone	Long-press empty space, then drag — the bottom bar counts what the box caught. To add one at a time instead, tap the hand in the top bar, then tap elements; the badge counts them.

Long-press and drag on iPhone: four elements caught, counted in the bottom bar.

Moving

Drag a selected element to move it. On the Mac — and on an iPad with a trackpad — you can skip the selecting: drag anything, and the top-level element under the pointer moves.
Arrow keys nudge by 1 pt, ⇧ arrows by 10 pt. The alignment guides light up while you nudge.
Everything snaps to the edges, centres and equal spacing of what is around it, Figma-style. Hold ⌘ to move without snapping; turn off Settings › Snapping & guides to never snap.
Hold ⇧ while dragging to lock the move to horizontal, vertical or 45°.
Hold ⌥ as you start dragging to move a copy and leave the original where it was.

Resizing and rotating

Edges and corners. Drag an edge handle to resize on one axis, a corner to resize both.
Proportions. Corners keep the proportions when Aspect Ratio is on in the inspector — or while you hold ⌘.
From the centre. Hold ⌥ to resize around the centre instead of the opposite edge.
Rotate. Hold ⇧ and drag a corner. The exact angle is in Position, in the inspector.
Fit in Container, under Arrange, makes an element fill its parent exactly.

Into and out of containers

Screens, cards and groups are containers: what is inside moves with them and is clipped by them. You put things in and take them out by holding still.

In: drag an element over a container and hold still for a moment. The container lights up, a ring fills, and when you let go the element is inside.
Out: drag something out of its parent, hold still, and it is released onto the board.
Keep moving while it charges and nothing happens — the pause is the signal, so you can pass over containers freely.
From Elements, Quick search or the creation bar, on the Mac and iPad, the part is on the board as soon as you drag it there: it snaps to the guides like any move, and goes into a container the same way, by holding still. On iPhone, a part dropped on a screen lands inside it.

A rectangle dragged from Elements over a list row on iPad: the row lights up as the target and takes it on release.

More actions: the menu

Every selection has a menu with everything you can do to it. Right-click on the Mac; two-finger tap on an iPad trackpad; on touch, long-press and keep holding until the ring completes.

Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete — and Copy Style / Paste Style, which carry the look of one element to another.
Group, Ungroup, Stack, Unstack.
Arrange: to the front or the back, Fit in Container — and with several selected, Align, Tidy Up and Stack.
Edit: light or dark for just this selection, flip and rotate for photos, convert to freeform or path, rasterize, and the AI actions — remove background, vectorize, extract text, correct or rewrite text.
Position — the pins sheet, on iPhone — plus Save Component and Export for the selection alone.
On empty space the menu is short: Paste and Select all.

The menu on the Mac: Cut and Copy, Group, Arrange and Edit, Save Component and Export, Delete — with the small toolbar floating above the selection.

Lock, hide, and the small toolbar

⌘L — or the padlock in Layers — locks an element: it stays selectable, but it will not move or resize until you unlock it.
The circle next to each layer toggles its opacity, so you can hide something without deleting it.
A small toolbar floats beside the selection with the everyday actions: edit, text format, lock, duplicate, delete, and ⋯ for the full menu. Duplicate and Lock live here and on the keyboard (⌘D, ⌘L), not in the menu. Board settings › Toolbar sets it to Off, Auto or Always.