How to Group Objects in Illustrator (Ctrl+G / Cmd+G)

Ctrl+G (Cmd+G on Mac) combines the currently selected objects into a group, letting them be moved, scaled, and rotated together as one unit with the Selection tool while each individual object inside remains fully separate and independently editable underneath. **Editing inside a group without ungrouping**: double-clicking a grouped object enters Isolation Mode, a focused editing context where you can click and edit individual objects inside the group directly, with everything outside the group dimmed and temporarily non-interactive. Pressing Escape exits isolation mode and returns to normal editing with the group treated as a single selectable unit again. **Nested groups**: groups can contain other groups, and double-clicking repeatedly drills down through each nested level — useful for complex illustrations built from smaller sub-assemblies (like a character built from grouped limbs, each limb itself grouped from individual shapes), letting you work at whatever level of the hierarchy is relevant without flattening the whole structure. **Ungrouping**: Ctrl+Shift+G (Cmd+Shift+G) reverses grouping, returning the contained objects to fully independent top-level status; if the group contains nested sub-groups, a single ungroup action only dissolves the outermost level, requiring repeated ungrouping to fully flatten a deeply nested structure. **Why grouping matters for stacking order**: objects within a group maintain their relative stacking order to each other, but the group as a whole occupies one position in the broader stacking order of its parent layer — meaning Bring to Front or Send to Back applied to a group moves the entire group as a block, not just one object within it, which is usually the desired behavior but worth being aware of if you expected to reorder just one element inside an existing group. **Related shortcuts**: Ctrl+Shift+G (Cmd+Shift+G) for ungrouping, and the stacking order shortcuts (Ctrl+Shift+] and Ctrl+Shift+[) which apply to whatever is currently selected, whether that's a single object or an entire group. **Selecting a group without entering isolation mode**: a single click on any part of a group selects the entire group as a unit with the Selection tool active, while double-clicking is specifically what enters isolation mode for editing an individual member — this distinction matters since a single accidental extra click can put you into isolation mode when you only meant to select the whole group. **Groups and Layers panel visibility**: a group appears as a single expandable row in the Layers panel, with its member objects nested beneath it, letting you toggle the entire group's visibility or lock state in one action, or expand it to control individual members' visibility separately if needed. **Copying a group preserves its structure**: duplicating or copy-pasting a group keeps every member object correctly grouped in the new copy, meaning you don't need to re-group after duplicating a complex multi-object icon or diagram element elsewhere in the same document or a different one. **Mistake to avoid**: assuming a group automatically merges the visual appearance of its members (like unifying overlapping fills into one shape) — grouping is purely an organizational and transform-behavior action, not a boolean or merge operation; overlapping objects inside a group remain visually stacked and separate exactly as before, and achieving an actual merged shape requires the Pathfinder panel's Unite operation instead, applied separately from grouping. **Groups and the Appearance panel**: applying an effect (like a drop shadow) to a group as a whole via the Appearance panel applies that single effect to the group's combined visual output as if it were one flattened object, which produces a meaningfully different result than applying the same effect individually to each object inside the group before grouping — worth testing deliberately if a shadow or glow effect looks different than expected after grouping previously-separate objects. **Selecting objects across multiple groups simultaneously**: Shift-clicking one member from Group A and one member from Group B (while in isolation mode for neither) selects those two groups as whole units rather than the individual clicked objects, since a single click anywhere on a grouped object selects the entire group by default — reaching an individual member inside a group without entering isolation mode requires holding a modifier (typically Option/Alt) while clicking with the Selection tool.