These Rename Utilities Can Help You Rename Batch Files In Linux

In Linux there are multiple ways to rename files and folders in batch but from command-line it can be difficult for some users. Lets checkout some useful rename utilities that are available for Linux.

1: PyRenamer

PyRenamer lets you rename files and folders in batch using patterns, substitutions, search and replace, insert text, delete text, append text to file name, or lets you rename files individually. You can also rename images using their EXIF tags and music using their internal tags. It is free Gnome application and released under GNU General Public License.

Features:

• Rename files using patterns.
• Rename images using their EXIF tags.
• Rename audio files using their internal tags.
• You can use search & replace to rename files.
• You can use common substitutions.
• You can manually rename selected files.

To install PyRenamer in Ubuntu/Linux Mint use this command:

Terminal Commands:
sudo apt-get install pyrenamer

2: GPRename

GPRename is a batch renamer utility which is around from quite sometime released under GNU General Public License version 3, it lets your rename files and directories in batch. GPRename is written in Perl, and runs on any Unix-like operating system.

Features:

• Rename both files and directories
• Case change: to UPPERCASE, to lowercase or Only The First Letter
• Insert or delete text at a position
• Replace text with the option of case sensitive
• Search text with the option of regular expression (regex not supported in replace string)
• Rename with numbers (001.jpg, 002.jpg, 003.jpg...)
• Automatically trim double spaces to one space, also trim leading and/or trailing spaces around the name
• Multilingual: Brazilian Portuguese, English, French, Polish, Spanish

To install GPRename in Ubuntu/Linux Mint use this command:

Terminal Commands:
sudo apt-get install gprename

3: Thunar

Thunar is a modern file manager for the Xfce Desktop Environment. There is a Thunar bulk renamer plugin available for Thunar file manager. To "bulk rename" files means to change the name of multiple files at once using some criterion that applies to at least one of the files. Thunar includes a bulk renamer which can be run separately using the command Thunar -B or from within Thunar by selecting two or more files in the main area and pressing F2 or choosing Edit → Rename... from the main menu.

To install Thunar File Manager and Renamer plugin in Ubuntu/Linux Mint use this command:

Terminal Commands:
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends thunar
sudo apt-get install thunar-media-tags-plugin

4: Metamorphose

Metamorphose is very powerful rename application, it's not in development anymore but most release works amazingly very well. It lets you rename files and folders of large sets fairly quickly and easily. With its extensive feature set, flexibility and powerful interface, A must-have for those that need to rename many files and/or folders on a regular basis. In addition to general usage renaming, it is very useful for photo and music collections, webmasters, programmers, legal and clerical, etc.

Features:

• Preview every item to be renamed before committing changes.
• Add any number of operations in any order (v.2 only)
• Recursive renamer: load all files in directory and in sub-directories.
• Undo changes in case of mistakes.
• Regular expression support throughout.
• Rename music and image files by their metadata information.
• Full Unicode support means any character from any language can be used.
• Use of all allowed characters under Windows and OSX, all except ':' in Linux.

To install Metamorphose2 in Ubuntu 17.10 Artful/17.04 Zesty/16.04 Xenial/Linux Mint 18 use these commands:

Terminal Commands:
wget -O metamorphose2.deb https://goo.gl/eSSDMz
sudo dpkg -i metamorphose2.deb
sudo apt-get -f install

To install Metamorphose2 in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty/Linux Mint 17 use these commands:

Terminal Commands:
wget -O metamorphose2.deb https://goo.gl/eSSDMz
sudo dpkg -i metamorphose2.deb
sudo apt-get -f install

5: RNM Bulk rename utility

RNM is another great rename utility which lets you rename files/directories in bulk. Naming scheme (Name String) can be applied or regex replace can be performed to modify file names on the fly. This program uses PCRE2 regex to provide search (and replace) functionality. Using this program you can perform versatile actions to modify names, delete/replace part of it, indexing, case conversion, insert text, insert various file information like modification time, access time, permission etc.., insert parent directory names, working directory name etc.. and many more.
File search functionality is provided with PCRE2 regex. Fixed string search is also possible. Operations (rename, changing names, search) are selective of file type (directory, file, link). Files can be sorted by name, modification time, access time, size, file type (directory, file, link) etc.. It provides an undo functionality to move back unwanted rename operations. Different rnm operation on different directory remembers their own undo history.

Features:

• Rename files/directories/links en masse with dynamically constructed names.
• Undo rename.
• Names (or name strings) can be taken from a file.
• Inserting file information (mtime, atime, ctime, permission etc..) in arbitrary formats.
• Indexing and formatting the indexes in different ways.
• Latin, scientific and base conversion for indexes and counters.
• Inserting different level of parent directory names.
• Access to current directory name, file name with and without extension.
• Regex replace to delete/swap/replace part of the file name.
• A regex replace operation can be performed on file only, directory only, link only or any combination of them.
• Uppercase/Lowercase conversion on file name (can be done by selecting a part).
• Replace strings can be taken from files.
• Search string to search for files with matching regex/string.
• Search string can be specified for only file, directory, link or any combination of them.
• Inverse search.
• Search strings can be taken from files.
• Sorting files and indexing.
• Sorting files according to size, modification time, access time etc..
• Prioritize file, directory or link during sort.
• Running simulation.

This tool can be used from command-line, checkout documentation here for usage.

To install RNM Utility in Ubuntu/Linux Mint use these commands:

Terminal Commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:neurobin/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rnm

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