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Renaming Implementations

A Better Finder Rename offers the choice between a number of technical ways in which the actual file renaming takes place.

The default mode which is selected for you when you first launch the application is appropriate for most uses and there is usually little reason for changing this setting.

There are however situations in which this mechanism may not work correctly. This can be the case with third-party file systems, remote volumes and external storage devices that are not 100% compatible with Mac OS X. In such cases, you may want to try using the other mechanisms.

1) Tiger Mode (previously called Ultra-safe Finder mode)

This is the default implementation for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which uses Apple Script to make the Finder rename the files; this is not especially fast (but more than fast enough), but has the advantage that the Finder is aware of the changes that are made to the file system and will update its views immediately. This is also the only renaming mode that preserves file/ spotlight comments reliably on Mac OS X 10.4.

This mode does not work in conjunction with FileVault-encrypted home folders due to a bug in Apple's AppleScript implementation.

2) Fast Cocoa mode (potential file comment loss)

This implementation directly uses Mac OS X Cocoa application programming interfaces to rename the files.

It is fast, but you may lose all the Finder comments of the files that are being renamed because the Finder is unaware of the rename taking place. It is also possible that the Finder will not immediately display the changed file names. Don't worry, the file names have been changed and the Finder is going to catch up soon..

3) Use fast unicode mode (potential file comment loss)

This uses the Carbon APIs to rename files and is compatible with international character sets.

4) Leopard Mode (previously called Ultra-fast move mode)

This is the recommended mechanism for use with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

It was originally introduced as the default implementation in version 7.7.6. It uses the same system level calls as the Finder to rename the files. Unfortunately Apple have broken this method in Mac OS X 10.4.9, where it removes comments!

It is thus not recommended for use with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.