A beginner’s guide to Rename

Sometimes the built-in macOS Finder renaming tool doesn’t cut the mustard. Enter Rename; a handy Homebrew formula for batch renaming files using your Terminal.

This formula is based off the Perl script of the same name. Refer to that original version’s documentation if you get stuck.

Forgive the brevity below. I’ll update this once I get more of a hang of Rename.

Install rename

You can install rename with Homebrew:

brew install rename

Batch rename files

Use -N or --counter-format Here’s how to set to zero-padded to three digits:

rename --counter-format 001 *.jpg

rename --counter-format 000001 --lower-case --keep-extension --expr='$_ = "$N" if @EXT' *

(Right now the above is problematic as it reads step-11.jpg before step-2.jpg.)

Preview changes

Passing -n (or --dry-run or --just-print) will just show the changes in Terminal without applying them to the actual files.

rename -n # rest of command to preview

I use it almost every time I use rename; first running the desired command with -n (and usually fixing one or two things) and then, when I’m happy, running the real thing without -n.