rename

Animal Software's Panda Batch File Renamer is a free tool for making stir-fry. No, it's actually a batch file renamer, a tool that renames files in large numbers all at once, the technical term for which is "batches." So, you're mildly impressed but wonder, "Do I need it?" Well, if you have a digital camera or camcorder or an MP3 player, you may have noticed that your pictures and songs don't always make themselves easy to find. It's much easier to rename all of one artist's songs or one summer'… Read more

Our utilities update report is a column on updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is on bringing you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems. This week there were four updates, for a display manager and customizing tool, a file renamer, a file recovery tool, and a popular maintenance tool.

The first utility update this week was for SwitchResX, which is a tool that can help … Read more

Ken Rename from Kensoft is a free batch file renamer that offers a lot of configuration options and enables you to replace strings, reorder and renumber files, remove and insert specific characters from files, decode files, and create macros to perform batch processes automatically. It includes extra features such as picture previews, EXIF support, and import/export capabilities.

At first glance, Ken Rename's red-bordered interface seems busy, but it actually does a capable job of managing a lot of features in a limited space, with a file menu and toolbar along the top, a tabbed selection of functions, and … Read more

One of the dangers of sharing your creative work online is that other people can easily steal it and claim it as their own. Watermarks are one easy way to make sure that your name is never disassociated from your digital images. WaterMark V2 is a versatile program that lets users add custom watermarks to their images without a lot of hassle.

The program's interface isn't the most intuitive thing we've ever seen, but we were able to figure it out fairly easily with a bit of poking around. The first step involves creating the watermark itself, … Read more

Small businesses and start-ups need all the help they can get. Fortunately, there's a wide range of free tools that can help entrepreneurs, contractors, and tradespeople take care of business. Bid-n-Invoice Basic Invoice is an easy-to-use application for creating and printing professional-looking invoices and estimates. Best of all, it's free for both personal and commercial use.

Basic Invoice opened with an extremely basic interface, just a blank field and a toolbar with icons labeled New Invoice, Manual Invoice, and Help. We clicked New Invoice, which opened the program's template in a separate window. A drop-down list let … Read more

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which we answer questions e-mailed in by our readers. This week there were questions on toggling Hyper-Threading in Intel CPUs on Macs, options for upgrading RAM on older Mac systems, and how to rename multiple items in a folder at once. We continually answer e-mail questions, and though we present a few answers here, we welcome alternative approaches and views from readers and encourage you to post your suggestions in the comments.

Question: RAM upgrade options for older Macs MacFixIt reader "Ronald" asks:

This awkwardly named utility (now known as "Better Rename" in the Mac App Store) can be extremely useful in some very specific situations. Anyone who needs to rename large batches of files on a daily basis--especially Web developers and anybody working with lots of photos or audio files--should definitely check out A Better Finder Rename. Most of what this app does can also be done with the Finder and Automator, but nowhere near as quickly nor as easily.

ABFR offers a huge number of renaming options, everything from modifying text and adding sequence numbers to changing formats and … Read more

If you want to rename a file in OS X, you can select it and then do one of several things. The first is to press the Return key and the name will be highlighted for editing, or you can get information on the file and rename it using the Info window. A commonly used alternative to these is to click the name of the highlighted file with the mouse and after a small delay the file's name will be highlighted for editing.

While I have found using the Return key is the fastest way to switch between selected … Read more

Naru's Flexible Renamer is a free tool for renaming files and folders, either singly or in large batches, including subfolders. It can rename items using a wide range of methods: copying, substituting, translating, moving, reordering, and attaching letters, numbers, and characters in specified or randomly generated patterns. It also supports Unicode strings for a wide range of languages. It has sophisticated, flexible filtering options to exclude or include items for processing, and it can modify file or folder information such as time and date stamp.

Flexible Renamer is a portable application that doesn't have to be installed: just … Read more