Significance Biological specimens, such as whole blood, contain many different types of cells that have important applications for monitoring health, including tracking vaccine efficacy and HIV progression, and for treating complex diseases, like cancer. However, current cell-sorting technologies require expensive and large pieces of equipment and can only isolate a few types of cells at one time. Here, we develop a cell-sorting platform by engineering dynamic DNA devices that can label, sort, and recover different cell populations at high purity en masse. This DNA-based nanotechnology can potentially be expanded to exceed the capacity of current methods for sorting multiple types of cells, improve biomedical diagnostics, and provide new insights into cell biology.