musescore / musescore/MuseScore
Box selection for notes
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- Dominant language
- C++
- Stars
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Description
Task description
Make it possible to make box selection for individual notes, like what we can do in piano rolls.
Usecase

Say I want to make measure 1 into measure 2, that is to select all the A notes and move them down for a whole step
In MS3 it's almost like I can do this with shift + left drag, but when release, it's the whole bar that become selected:

In MS4, while shift + left drag is working for things like hairpins, trying to do shift + drag on staff lines results in an instant selection of the whole bar:

While I can do it via selection menu or ctrl and clicking, making box selection and drag them down would be more convenient.
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by comparing the existing piano-roll box-selection behavior with shift-dragging on staff lines in MS4, where the whole bar is selected instead. Trace the note-selection interaction and define completion as selecting individual notes with a box and moving them together, without selecting the entire bar.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- cpp
- Domain
- desktop
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100