Similarly AppleScript is an excellent language for performing this type of task, but it is Automator’s friendly visual scripting system that offers most users the best power-to-complexity ratio.ĭepending on the precise nature of the renaming desired, you might want to remove or replace characters within file names, change the naming convention to incorporate date, sequence numbers, or the like, truncate names, or add or modify extensions. The time and effort required to learn these is great, so unless you can use them in other situations they are unlikely to prove a wise investment.

The most powerful tools for renaming files are, inevitably, the most complex: script languages such as Perl run from Terminal’s command line, using regular expressions (regex). Used carefully they can whistle through such tasks in the twinkling of an eye. Rather than waste hours doing it by hand, it repays the modest effort to build an Automator workflow, or the cost of a dedicated tool such as A Better Finder Rename. Yet there are times when you need to rename batches of files, perhaps because they came from an old archive, or need to be loaded onto a server that requires different conventions. There is nothing as soul-destroying as tediously changing the names of tens or hundreds of files in the Finder.

Automator mac rename file by text