Container Emptier

A Factorio mod that lets you flag an entire container — or anything else with an inventory — to be emptied by the logistics network in one drag, instead of right-clicking every stack individually.

What it does

Vanilla Factorio (2.0+) lets you right-click a single stack in a container to have construction bots haul it off to storage. That's great for one stack, and tedious for a full steel chest.

This mod adds a selection tool to the shortcut bar:

• Drag over entities → every stack inside is flagged for pickup. Bots from the covering logistic network carry the contents off to storage chests.
• Alt-drag → cancel pending pickups on the selected entities.
• Re-dragging over an entity refreshes its plan to match the current contents.

It works on anything with an inventory, not just chests: assembler inputs/outputs, furnace contents and fuel, module slots, cars, tanks, spidertrons, cargo wagons, roboports, turret ammo, and so on. Your own character and robots in flight are deliberately excluded.

Requirements

• Factorio 2.1 (base game only — no Space Age required)
• The entities you empty must be inside a logistic network with construction bot coverage and available storage, same as the vanilla per-stack feature.

Usage

1. Click the Container emptier button in the shortcut bar (bottom right), or bind a hotkey under Settings → Controls → Mods.
2. Drag a selection box over the entities you want emptied.
3. Watch the bots do the work. Alt-drag to cancel if you change your mind (items already in a bot's hands will still be delivered).

How it works

The mod uses the same engine mechanism as vanilla's per-stack right-click: an
item-request-proxy entity with a removal plan (added in Factorio 2.0). On selection, control.lua walks every inventory of each selected entity, groups the stacks by item and quality into a single removal plan, and spawns one proxy per entity. The engine then dispatches construction bots to fulfill it, and the proxy cleans itself up when done.

There is no per-tick logic and no persistent state — everything happens at selection time, so the mod has zero UPS impact while idle and is safe to add to or remove from existing saves.

Notes and caveats

• Flagging a machine that's actively being fed (e.g. an assembler with inserters supplying it) means bots and inserters will fight over the contents. That's inherent to "empty everything" — alt-drag to cancel.
• The removal plan is a snapshot: items produced after you drag aren't included. Drag again to re-flag with fresh contents.