ZRename V1.0.0

ZRename

Rename ten thousand files without fear

A bulk file renamer for Linux and Windows. Drop a folder in, stack up rules,
watch a live before/after table with collisions flagged in red, and press Apply.
If it was wrong, press Undo — and every file goes back, including after a
reboot.

zsync.eu/zrename — homepage and downloads

_{Free · open source · no telemetry · no account · works offline}

Preview before you commit A live table with a character-level diff, so you see the exact result of every rule before a single file moves.

Undo that actually works Every batch is journalled to disk before the first rename. Undo a batch you ran yesterday.

Rules that stack Eleven rule types, reorderable and individually toggleable, like an image editor's adjustment layers.

Names from metadata EXIF, ID3, video, PDF and hashes turn a string tool into a librarian.

---

Contents

• Why another bulk rename tool
• How it keeps your files safe
• Screenshots
• Every feature
• Install
• Quick start
• The rules
• Metadata tokens
• Presets
• Filters
• Command line
• Keyboard
• Performance
• Where things live
• Building from source
• Licence

---

Why another bulk rename tool

Renaming a pile of files is a chore that hits everyone — phone photo dumps,
downloaded series, exported invoices, asset folders, scanned documents — and the
existing tools are genuinely bad at it.

Tool	What it gets wrong
Advanced Renamer	Windows only · cluttered interface · closed source
Bulk Rename Utility	Windows only · legendarily overwhelming, fourteen panels at once
PowerToys PowerRename	Windows only · one regex rule · no metadata · no undo journal
krename	KDE-bound · dated · weak preview · no journalled undo
Thunar bulk rename	Three rule types · no stacking · no presets
rename / shell loops	No preview · no undo · one typo from wrecking a folder
ZRename	Linux and Windows · eleven stacking rules · metadata tokens · undo that survives a reboot

Two things stand out on that list.

Almost none of them have a real undo — and when a rule was wrong on 4,000
files, undo is the only feature that matters.

And none of them handle the case-insensitive filesystem trap. Renaming
photo.JPG → photo.jpg on Windows silently fails or clobbers the file unless
the rename goes through a temporary name first. ZRename detects that case and
does the two-phase dance for you, without asking and without mentioning it.

---

How it keeps your files safe

Correctness is the entire product, so the engine is built in that order.

files × rules ──▶  plan  ──▶  validate  ──▶  journal  ──▶  execute
                 (a pure     (collisions,   (written     (two-phase
                  function)   bad names,     and flushed   where a cycle
                              limits)        first)        needs it)

1 · Plan first, touch nothing files × rules → plan is a pure function. Nothing on disk is touched while you type in a rule, so the preview can never half-apply something. 2 · Validate against the real filesystem Collisions — case-folded when the filesystem ignores case — characters the target rejects, Windows device names like CON.txt, name length in the right unit (255 bytes on ext4 versus 255 UTF-16 units on NTFS), and the 260-character MAX_PATH limit.

3 · Journal, then execute The undo journal is written and flushed to disk before the first rename, so a crash mid-batch still leaves a complete record. Swap cycles (a→b, b→a) and case-only changes go through a temporary name; everything else renames directly. 4 · Undo verifies before it moves Each file's size and modification time are checked against the journal first. A file you edited since the rename is reported, never overwritten.

Important

Overwrite is never a default. The conflict policy starts at stop and
report it, and even when you choose overwriting it refuses to settle two
selected files that want the same name — one of them would simply be lost.

Tip

Windows filesystem rules are stored as data, not #[cfg] blocks. An
FsProfile value describes case folding, illegal characters, reserved device
names and length limits, so the NTFS and FAT32 rule sets are exercised by unit
tests on any machine — and re-run against real NTFS on a Windows CI runner.

---

Screenshots

Collisions block Apply Rows that would land on a name another row wants are flagged, sorted to the top, and Apply stays disabled with a plain-English reason. Collision red is used for collisions and for nothing else in the app.	A regex tester that removes the guesswork The editor tests your pattern against the row you have selected and shows the capture groups and the final result as you type. Rules toggle off without being deleted.
Undo, even after a restart After applying, the commit bar becomes a confirmation strip with Undo. Every batch also lands in the history list — and those survive quitting the app.	Light is a first-class theme Long file lists genuinely read better on a light ground, so Bench Light is not an afterthought. Bench, Nord and a high-Contrast theme ship alongside it.
Everything from the keyboard Ctrl K reaches every command, preset, rule and theme without leaving the keyboard.	Settings that explain themselves Four themes, row density, paranoid mode, path-limit handling, and what to do when a file has no value for a token.
Filters that reach the whole folder Extensions, globs both ways, a name regex, a size range and a date range — before any rule runs.	Duplicate-aware Grouped by size first, then hashed, so only real candidates are read. It can untick the copies and leave the first of each group to be renamed.

---

Every feature

Rules Find & replace — plain text or regex with $1 capture groups, case-sensitive or not, first match or all Case — lower, UPPER, Title, Sentence, camelCase, PascalCase, snake_case, kebab-case Insert — at a position, at the start or end, before or after a marker Remove — a character range, a set of characters, a word, every digit, or repeated text Trim — surro...