Rename turns a folder of cryptic file names into a library you can actually browse: films and series, music, books, and the pile of documents nobody ever sorted. drop the folder in, it works out what each file is, fetches the proper titles, shows you exactly what it intends to do, and only then touches anything. every run is recorded and can be undone in one click, even after a restart.

media types

pick the type in the toolbar or leave it on automatic, which tells video, music and books apart by extension. a custom mode combines types freely, plus two fields for "only these extensions" and "never these", so a run covers exactly what is due. every type carries its own preset and its own format expression.

films and series

• reads series, season and episode out of names, including S01E02, 1x02, double episodes and absolute anime numbering; films with year.
• reads resolution, codecs, channels, runtime, frame rate and hdr from the file itself instead of trusting the name, no ffmpeg install required.
• fetches titles from TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, OMDb or TVmaze, and lets you override the match per series or film.
• pulls subtitles from OpenSubtitles, looked up by file hash so the timing fits the cut you have.
• writes nfo files, posters and backdrops for kodi, jellyfin and emby.
• tells you which episodes of your seasons are still missing.

music

• reads tags out of the file: id3v2 and id3v1 in mp3, vorbis comments in flac, ogg and opus, mp4 atoms in m4a and m4b, riff info in wav.
• falls back to the file name when tags are missing: 01 - title, artist - title, disc numbers, vinyl sides like A2; artist, album and year otherwise come from the folder names.
• fills the gaps from MusicBrainz, no api key needed.
• writes tags back into mp3 and flac on request, keeping embedded art and foreign fields intact, and undo reverts the tags too.
• drops the cover into the album folder, out of the file or from the Cover Art Archive.

books

• reads metadata from epub, mobi, azw3, pdf and fb2, calibre series info included.
• reads author, series and title from names like author - title or [series 05] title, and picks up isbn and year when they are in there.
• fills the gaps from Open Library and Google Books, both usable without a key.
• puts the cover next to the book.

files and documents

• builds a name from whatever the file gives up: date from the name or the file dates, sender, subject, reference numbers like RE-2024-0815, and the kind of document.
• reads metadata from docx, xlsx, pptx, odt, ods, odp and pdf, and exif from jpeg and tiff with capture date and camera.
• reads the actual text of docx, odt and pdf when name and metadata say nothing, and looks for sender, subject and date in there. garbled text from fonts with their own encoding is discarded instead of turned into a wrong name.
• numbers files consecutively with a counter placeholder when a plain series is all you want.

the same run, whatever it is

• builds target names from format expressions with optional blocks, with presets for plex, jellyfin/emby, kodi, albums, books and receipts, or your own.
• moves, copies, hard links or symlinks into the folder structure, handles conflicts and pulls companion files along.
• a tree preview shows the planned folder structure before anything is touched, skipped files and their reason included, copyable as text.
• cancel mid run and the half written target file and the empty folders made for it disappear again, the source untouched.
• finds duplicates by size and partial hash.
• runs saved batch jobs, optionally watching a folder.

your own rules

some collections follow a scheme no tool knows. for those you write a regular expression with named groups, test it against a sample file name in the app, and save it. each media type offers the groups that fit it, from season and episode to artist, author or sender. your rules are checked before the built-in patterns, so your special cases win.

nothing leaves your machine

the only network traffic is the metadata lookup you asked for. api keys stay in a local settings file, there is no account, no sync and no telemetry. music, books, documents and series over TVmaze work without any key at all. files are renamed in place or moved where you point the app, and a dry run shows the whole plan before anything happens.

under the hood

an electron app on a plain node core: name parsing, matching, format engine and rename engine are free of electron and covered by 232 tests, so the risky part, the part that moves your files, is the part that is verified. the interface speaks german and english, switchable without a restart, and further languages can be loaded from a translated template file.

portable, no installation: download and run. the file is not code signed, so smartscreen speaks up the first time ("more info", then "run anyway").

licence

Rename is released under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. private, academic and non-profit use is free, including changes and passing it on, as long as the licence and the copyright notice travel with it. commercial use or distribution needs an agreement first: licence, commercial terms, [email protected].

privacy

Rename collects no user data. read the full privacy policy.