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Purchase an upgrade to version 12.

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Download A Better Finder Rename 12.04

for Intel & Apple Silicon Macs, requires macOS 10.15 or later.

Download A Better Finder Rename 11.62

for Intel & Apple Silicon Macs, requires macOS 10.13 or later.

Download A Better Finder Rename 11.53

for Intel & Apple Silicon Macs, requires macOS 10.10 or later.

Version 12.04

29th November 2023

The new version now properly displays the command window in dark mode.

Version 12.03

13th November 2023

This new version fixes a few minor bugsmac.

Version 12.02

23rd October 2023

This version

  • fixes a bug affecting case conversions
  • fixes a bug affecting moving of actions within the action list
  • fixes a dark mode bug

Version 12.01

12th October 2023

This version makes a few post-launch improvements

  • improved upgrade message to reduce confusion when entering the new unlock code
  • smaller text in the presets table
  • many improvements to the French localization

Version 12.00 Final

11th October 2023

This is the first release of version 12 of A Better Finder Rename. You can get an overview of what is new.

Version 12 of A Better Finder Rename is now available! Check out What's New or Download the Trial for free. Version 12 and version 11 can be installed side-by-side without issues.

Version 11.62

11th October 2023

The new version alerts the user to the availability of version 12, which features many improvements focused primarily on professional media workflows.

Version 11.61

1st March 2023

The new version introduces a new web-based help system.

Version 11.60

15th February 2023

The new version fixes a minor bug.

Version 11.59

4th February 2023

The new version delivers another minor bug fix.

Version 11.58

2nd February 2023

The new version delivers a minor bug fix.

Version 11.57

18th January 2023

The new version adds a warning when creating a droplet on Ventura.

Version 11.56

29th December 2022

The new version fixes a minor highlighting bug.

Version 11.55

15th December 2022

The new version adds support for hif files.

Version 11.54

30th November 2022

The new version adds the ability to filter on image comments.

Version 11.53

24th October 2022

The new version adds links to support material for droplet problems introduced by new macOS 13 Ventura security warnings.

Version 11.52

5th October 2022

The new version adds the ability to migrate droplets to presets.

Version 11.51

27th July 2022

The new version features a number of minor improvements and lots of behind the scenes changes.

If you're not already familiar with filter actions, you might want to watch the new How To Use Filter Actions YouTube Video.

Version 11.50

29th June 2022

The new version adds support for iXML meta-data in RIFF sound files.

Version 11.49

31st May 2022

The new version enhances the first launch experience.

Version 11.48

18th May 2022

The new version enhances the lexical case conversion action with support for verb contractions.

Version 11.47

26th April 2022

The nev version fixes a case conversion bug that would cause the program to block when certain special characters were present in the file name.

Version 11.46

15th April 2022

The new version fixes a dark mode bug.

Version 11.45

6th April 2022

The new version adds a few minor improvements.

Version 11.44

22nd February 2022

The new version further improves performance and memory utilization.

Version 11.43

26th January 2022

The new version is a minor bug fix update.

Version 11.42

5th January 2022

The new version adds the ability to decode percent encodings.

Version 11.41

15th December 2021

The new version fixes a metadata reading issue.

Version 11.40

8th December 2021

The new version adds an action to strip leading spaces.

Version 11.39

26th October 2021

The new version delivers a fix for a bug that could crash the application under a particular set of circumstances.

Version 11.37

12th October 2021

The new release fixes a rare crashing bug introduced in version 11.37.

Special thanks to Jerry for helping me debug this problem!

Version 11.36

9th August 2021

The new version rolls back some changes that appear to cause crashes with international character sets while we investigate.

Version 11.35

4th August 2021

The new version improves change highlighting.

Version 11.34

2nd June 2021

The new version adds support for IPTC location tags, such as city, state and country.

Version 11.33

20th May 2021

The new version fixes a bug in the filter action interface.

Version 11.32

12th May 2021

The new version allows the camera body serial number to be included in the file name.

Version 11.31

29th March 2021

The new version adds yet more tweaks to the the meta-data extraction engine.

Version 11.30

17th March 2021

The new version further improves the meta-data extraction engine.

Version 11.29

4th March 2021

The new version significantly improves the reliability and performance of the meta-data extraction engine.

Version 11.28

3rd March 2021

The new version adds image caption, keywords and user comment tags for improved renaming of images from Photos.app.

Version 11.27

4th February 2021

The new version fixes a minor bug in the preferences dialog.

Version 11.26

8th December 2021

The new version adds Apple Silicon native droplets.

Version 11.25

30th November 2020

The new version adds support for reading pdf creation dates.

Version 11.24

20th October 2020

The new version:

  • adds Apple Silicon native support
  • fixes the preferences option not to load the EXIF data to speed up some simple operations

Version 11.23

8th October 2020

The new version adds Big Sur compatibility and fixes a locale specific meta-data bug.

Version 11.22

16th September 2020

The new version fixes a minor bug in the info pane.

Version 11.21

1st September 2020

The new version fixes a bug affecting filter actions under macOS 10.11.

Version 11.20

6th August 2020

The new version fixes a bug with the alphabetical sequence actions.

Version 11.19

8th July 2020

The new version supports a wider range of movie content creation timestamps.

Version 11.18

16th June 2020

The new version fixes a minor bug in the parent folder action.

Version 11.17

19th May 2020

The new version fixes a bug that affected filtering with the sort-each-folder-separately option turned on.

Version 11.16

4th May 2020

The new version improves text highlighting in dark mode.

Version 11.15

23rd April 2020

The new version resolves a rare caching problem.

Version 11.14

9th April 2020

The new version features performance and reliability improvements.

Version 11.13

11th March 2020

The new release unlocks correctly for Better Rename 11 Mac App Store customers.

Version 11.12

4th March 2020

The new release improves the remove a range of characters action.

Version 11.11

14th February 2020

The new release adds a filter criteria to limit renames to files with a valid EXIF timestamp.

Version 11.10

7th January 2020

The new release fixes a text encoding bug that affected ID3 music meta-data tags and improves the processing of Spotlight meta-data.

Version 11.09

4th December 2019

The new version fixes a meta-data error.

Version 11.08

4th December 2019

The new version fixes some stepper controls on macOS 10.15 Catalina along with some minor bug fixes.

Version 11.07

25th November 2019

The new version fixes a multi-threading bug in the new meta-data extraction code.

Version 11.06

20th November 2019

The new version:

  • solves a string encoding problem with the previous version.
  • improves the performance of meta-data extraction.
  • fixes a problem that could result in inconsistent meta-data values across sessions.
  • improves presets editing.

Version 11.05

20th November 2019

The new version:

  • improves the performance of meta-data extraction.
  • fixes a problem that could result in inconsistent meta-data values across sessions.
  • improves presets editing.

Version 11.04

5th November 2019

The new version:

  • allows droplets to be updated to the latest 64-bit code base
  • allows Better Rename 8 and Better Rename 9 presets to be imported
  • adds a safety feature that prevents users from mistakenly renaming files with a leading dot

Version 11.03

29th October 2019

The new release fixes a problem with the ISO values reported by the tool.

Version 11.02

23rd October 2019

This is a quick bug fix for a display bug introduced a few hours earlier in 11.01.

Version 11.01

23rd October 2019

This release fixes a resizing bug that affected users of smaller screens.

Version 11 Final

15th October 2019

This is the first major new version upgrade since version 10 was released in 2015.

The new release features file filtering, greatly enhanced presets, meta-data support for many new file formats (including PDF, Microsoft Office documents, a myriad of video formats and much, much more).

This is a paid upgrade for anybody who does not own a forever upgrade or has bought after the 1st of January 2019.

It is a pleasure to continue developing this product for you, its users, so please support me by purchasing an upgrade. Thanks!

Version 11 beta 19

7th October 2019

This is the fourth and hopefully final release candidate for version 11 final, so if you are waiting for other people to report problems with the betas, gives us a shout at support@publicspace.net, so that we can get any issues fixed before the release!

This release fixes the tags displayed during MP3/AAC renames.

Version 11 beta 18

1st October 2019

In this release we are solving a problem with the sequence number user interface going out of step with the actual settings.

Version 11 beta 17

30th September 2019

This is the second release candidate for version 11 final, so if you are waiting for other people to report problems with the betas, gives us a shout at support@publicspace.net, so that we can get any issues fixed before the release!

Version 11 beta 16

25th September 2019

This is the first release candidate for version 11 final.

This latest beta:

  • fixes a crashing bug that could occur while performing change highlighting on non-ASCII text
  • improves music tag parsing to avoid truncation in older id3 standards
  • handles various startup scenarios more gracefully

Version 11 beta 15

10th September 2019

This beta fixes an endless loop bug that accidentally made it into yesterday's beta 14. Sorry!

Version 11 beta 14

9th September 2019

This latest beta version delivers two significant bug fixes affecting filter actions and general speed issues.

Version 11 beta 13

2nd September 2019

The new beta:

  • adds all spotlight meta-data tags, expanding the reach of the meta-data beyond image and video formats to PDF, Word, Excel, etc..
  • ensures that action list row height are now correctly calculated
  • improves dark mode highlighting
  • improves with UUID tags

Version 11 beta 12

26th August 2019

This 12th beta delivers a new lexical case conversion action that allows words to be capitalized, lowercased or uppercased depending on their lexical category, e.g. nouns, verbs, etc.. complete with a list of words to exclude.

It also fixes the intermediate results preview column when using filter actions and updates the help book.

Version 11 beta 11

5th August 2019

The 11th beta delivers a number of improvements and bug fixes:

  • import version 10 presets directly
  • improved keyboard loop for new auto-increment counters
  • preferences option to switch off preset popup window at startup
  • preset popup window supports dark mode
  • action list is shown when activating a multi-step preset
  • name change highlighting works properly with accents, umlauts and emoji
  • fixes a crashing bug when rename fails
  • the height of filter actions in the action list is now calculated correctly
  • meta-data reading bug is corrected

Version 11.00 beta 10

27th July 2019

Beta 10 is the first fully notarized version of the tool in preparation for macOS 10.15 Catalina.

If you want to get information about the launch later this summer, please subscribe to our newsletter.

Version 11.00 beta 9

22nd July 2019

Beta 9 introduces the long awaited auto-increment counters for generating successive sequence numbers over multiple sessions.

Version 11.00 beta 8

8th July 2019

This new beta

  • re-organizes the action and category popup menus to make it easier to identify the right action for your purpose
  • fixes a bug affecting the "Remove at front" and related actions

Version 11.00 beta 7

3rd July 2019

This new version fixes the new filter actions.

Version 11.00 beta 6

1st July 2019

The new version makes major changes to the multi-threading of the database access and should fix a bug where A Better Finder Rename would crash after performing the rename stage correctly. It also introduces undo support for edits within the multi-step rename interface.

Version 11.00 beta 5

26th June 2019

The previous beta performed only a partial migration of droplets to v11. This version fixes this.

If you have used the droplet migration in the File menu on the previous betas, you need to re-run it on each droplet that you want to be linked to v11.

Version 11.00 beta 4

24th June 2019

This latest beta makes a number of big improvements.

  • The metadata storage has now been migrated to an in-memory store and is much faster.
  • The Sentence Case action now uses latent semantic mapping to identify proper nouns.
  • The Help menu now maps to a What's New in Version 11? web-page.
  • fixes a number of bugs ranging from minor to crashing..

Version 11.00 beta 3

19th June 2019

The new beta fixes a crashing bug, improves the "Make Sentence Case" action and fixes the intermediate result column when using multiple filter actions.

Version 11.00 beta 2

18th June 2019

The new beta improves dark mode support for the new presets sidebar.

Version 11.00 beta 1

17th June 2019

This is the first public beta version of the upcoming version 11.

Version 10.46

15th October 2019

This is the last 10.x update now that Version 11 is out

Version 10.45

13th September 2019

The new version fixes a crashing bug introduced in the previous update.

Version 10.44

31st July 2019

The new version is now fully notarized and fixes a minor preview bug.

Version 10.43

25th June 2019

The new version fixes a rare crashing bug affecting the remove trailing spaces action.

Version 10.42

5th June 2019

The new version improves the handling of sub-second timestamps.

Version 10.40

20th March 2019

The new version fixes a display issue on macOS 10.14 Mojave.

Version 10.39

7th March 2019

The new version adds support for CR3 raw image files and 35mm equivalent focal lengths.

Version 10.38

16th January 2019

This is the first French language localization of the product.

We have done our very best to make this a great translation, but as this is our first attempt there are likely to be some isolated translation errors, oversights, etc.

We would really appreciate it if you could let us know of any issues you might run into or improvement requests that you might have immediately so that we can correct them.

Please contact Frank Reiff directly and we will get a fix out asap.

This new version also includes improvements to the German localization, bug fixes and changes to the internals of the droplets.

Version 10.37

4th December 2018

This is the first version of A Better Finder Rename to be localized for German-speaking markets.

Version 10.36

6th November 2018

The new version now deals gracefully with incorrect sub second shooting timestamp.

Version 10.35

10th October 2018

The new version adds meta-data support for TV shows, episodes, seasons, networks and studios.

Version 10.34

3rd October 2018

The new version features improvements in meta-data extraction.

Version 10.33

21st September 2018

The new version now supports dark mode on macOS X 10.14 Mojave (Hurray!).

Version 10.32

5th September 2018

The new version uses the sub-second EXIF timestamp when this is available in the source files.

Version 10.31

26th July 2018

We recently became aware of a situation that could cause droplets to fail frequently on macOS 10.13 systems that have had dropbox installed, even when dropbox is no longer active.

If you are on macOS 10.13 or later and have ever had dropbox installed, you may experience intermittent droplet failures and have to drag & drop items on a droplet twice.

In this case, you can use the "Migrate Droplet..." feature in the "File" menu to migrate your droplet(s) to the latest version, which works around the file synchronization problem that causes the problem.

Version 10.30

5th July 2018

The new version features an improved unlock experience.

Version 10.29

30th May 2018

The new version adds support for the album artist mp3 meta-data tag.

Version 10.28

25th April 2018

The new version makes it easier to toggle the clear list setting from the preview table.

Version 10.27

14th March 2018

The new version addresses a number of minor issues.

Version 10.26

28th February 2018

The new version solves a minor cosmetic issue introduced by the latest High Sierra update.

Version 10.25

31st January 2018

The new version introduces support for the new HEIC and HEIF image formats.

Version 10.24

9th January 2018

The new version sorts the Presets menu in alphabetical order.

Version 10.23

7th November 2017

The new version delivers a minor bug fix.

Version 10.22

11th October 2017

The new version remembers whether the preview pane was toggled off across sessions.

Version 10.21

12th September 2017

The new version further bullet-proofs the unlock mechanism against recent changes in how macOS treats preferences files.

Version 10.20

18th July 2017

The new version adds the Lens Make tag.

Version 10.19

5th July 2017

The new version improves the unlocking experience.

Version 10.18

13th June 2017

The new version prevents newly created droplets from showing up is the "Open With" Finder dialog.

Version 10.17

16th May 2017

The new version deliver minor improvements and bug fixes.

Version 10.16

6th April 2017

The new version fixes a crashing bug when adding files that occurred on some Mac configurations.

Version 10.15

29th March 2017

The new version adds new file size tags.

Version 10.14

8th March 2017

The new version improves error reporting.

Version 10.13

10th January 2017

Removes the automatically added window tabbing menu item on macOS 10.12 Sierra and restores fancy drawing for all stepper controls.

Version 10.12

13th December 2016

The new version fixes a cosmetic bug on macOS Sierra.

Version 10.11

15th November 2016

The new release fixes a crashing bug in the preview pane.

Version 10.10

September 6th 2016

The new version delivers some under the hood improvements to drawing code and stepper implementation.

Version 10.09

2nd August 2016

The new version fixes a bug when adding MP3 tags to the end of file names.

Version 10.08

26th July 2016

The new version makes some internal changes for better future proofing.

Version 10.07

7 June 2016

The new versions adds the ability to export and import presets to enable easier sharing between team members.

Version 10.06

13th April 2016

The new release adds the ability to move ranges of text.

Version 10.05

16th February 2016

This new release adds experimental support for FLAC audio files.

Version 10.04

2nd February 2016

This release fixes a software update vulnerability in the Sparkle framework that was exposed on the 29th of January.

Version 10.03

13th January 2016

This release adds the ability to toggle the preview pane on and off, as well as a lot of under-the-hood changes.

Version 10.02

8th December 2015

This release fixes a code signing bug that was reported a few hours ago and prevented version 10.01 running on some systems.

This issue may also prevent auto-update from working on 10.01 and mean that you may need to manually update your copy by downlading the program from the A Better Finder Rename main page.

Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm preparing a blog post about this issue to at least explain what went wrong.

This release also contains a few minor improvements around the upgrade experience and further modernizes the code base to offer a good platform for further development.

Version 10.01

1st December 2015

This first point update collects a number of minor internal and external changes.

Version 10.00 final

21st October 2015

Version 10 is the first paid upgrade to A Better Finder Rename since February 2012 and features a host of usability improvements.

  • Change highlighting in the Instant Preview makes it easier than ever to dial in changes.
  • Preview Pane displays file contents, meta-data and tags.
  • Multi-Step Interface completely reworked.
  • Aesthetics now reflect Yosemite/ El Capitan minimalist styling

Version 10.00 beta 4

24th September 2015

This new beta fixes a number of minor bugs:

  • nicer buttons
  • fixes a bug with the Mac App Store receipt validation
  • preview table rows are now the right height when the intermediate column is switched off
  • when migrating version 8/9 presets, the presets become visible immediately

Version 10.00 beta 3

22nd September 2015

This new beta makes a number of improvements:

  • Preview table now looks much tidier and is easier to read
  • The "This Action" column can now be switched off if so desired
  • build using Xcode 7
  • modernized Mac App Store receipt checking
  • improved highlighting of the selected row in the preview table
  • fixes a bug that affected change highlighting
  • other minor bug fixes & cosmetic changes

Version 10.00 beta 2

16th September 2015

This beta introduces the "This Action" preview column that appears when more than one renaming action is active and displays the intermediate results of just that action. This makes it much easier to see the effect of a single action in a multi-step rename.

The column shows the file name as processed by the previous action and the result of the currently selected action and highlights changes between them.

The second beta also contains some bug fixes and aesthetic refinements.

Version 10.00 beta 1

3rd September 2015

This is the first public beta release of version 10 of A Better Finder Rename.

You can check out the feature list on the A Better Finder Rename 10 Beta Release page.

Version 9.54

21st October 2015

Minor release notes version 10 has shipped.

Version 9.53

7th September 2015

Minor release notes version 10 beta 1 is out.

Version 9.52

29th July 2015

This release improves behaviour when an attempt to rename files on read-only media is made.

Version 9.51

10th June 2015

This release fixes a minor bug and features a lot of behind the scenes changes.

Version 9.50

28th April 2015

This release improves the startup behaviour.

Version 9.49

24th March 2015

This release fixes a bug in the regular expressions implementation.

Version 9.48

17th March 2015

This release modernizes the preview table implementation and fixes a number of minor bugs.

Version 9.47

17th March 2015

This release was only out for a few hours and contains a major bug. Please update to version 9.48 or later to correct this.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Version 9.46

25th February 2015

This release refines the preferences dialog.

Version 9.45

11th February 2015

This release adds a new tag that allows users to insert the contents of the clipboard into file names.

Version 9.44

22nd January 2015

This release fixes the "Show Invisibles" preview option that allows you to see invisible characters, such as spaces and tabs.

Version 9.43

3rd December 2014

This release fixes a multi-threading issue.

Version 9.42

19th November 2014

This release fixes a sorting bug related to Yosemite's sqlite database.

Version 9.41

5th November 2014

This release adopts a new "flatter" look to blend more easily with the refreshed Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite user interface.

The new look is only applied on Yosemite, so the application should look much the same on older Mac OS X versions.

Version 9.40

24th September 2014

This release features a major overhaul of the music tag renaming actions.

The user interface is brought in line with the "Tag-Based Renaming" actions and now features a drag & drop based token interface.

We have also added a number of advanced AAC and MP3 tags to the tag library.

Version 9.39

20th August 2014

This release makes a minor improvement to the "Change Existing Number" action.

Version 9.38

28th July 2014

This release solves a rare crashing bug.

Version 9.37

22nd July 2014

This release adds online crash reporting to help us more quickly identify stability issues in future.

Version 9.36

18th June 2014

This release improves stability under heavy load.

We appear to have had some issues due to changes in how Xcode's LLVM compiler deals with multi-threaded memory management.

A great thank you to the people who have quickly reported these issues. Please remember that we can only fix bugs that we know about and that some bugs simply do not occur on all Mac models and configurations.

Please let us know immediately if you find a crashing bug, so we can react quickly!

Version 9.34/5

17th June 2014

This release fixes an intermittent bug that has been causing trouble for many users.

It looks like this was a multi-threading bug that has been around since version 8.0, but never manifested until the latest Mavericks updates.

We are genuinely sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Version 9.33

5th June 2014

This release ensures that A Better Finder Rename will retain its file selection when you auto-update in the future.

Version 9.32

6th May 2014

This release fixes inaccuracies in the progress reporting.

Version 9.31

19th March 2014

This release improves droplets on Mavericks.

Version 9.30

27th January 2014

This release is the first to adopt the modern Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) memory management architecture and thus benefits from significant performance gains in some areas.

Version 9.29

14th January 2014

This release introduces the new <ShootingDateSubSecond> tag.

Version 9.28

10th December 2013

This new release makes a series of small enhancements and minor bug fixes.

Version 9.27

20th November 2013

This new release fixes a minor bug that could make A Better Finder Rename fail without an error message.

Version 9.26

15th October 2013

This new release finally retires our beloved multi-step action drawer and replaces it with a more modern design.

Version 9.25

23rd September 2013

This latest version fixes a bug in the "Keep Specific Characters" action.

Version 9.24

14th August 2013

This latest version adds the ability to display invisible/ non-printing characters in the file name preview.

Version 9.23

16th July 2013

This release adds a shortcut for going full screen.

Version 9.22

2nd July 2013

This release adds keyboard shortcuts for removing individual items from the preview list and for clearing the entire list.

Version 9.21

18th June 2013

This release makes it easier to join our new opt-in mailing list.

Version 9.20

11th June 2013

This release improves the unlocking mechanism to handle additional special cases.

Version 9.19

6th March 2013

This release adds support for reading meta-data tags in a variety of video formats.

Version 9.18

30th January 2013

This release adds support for the global position system (GPS) tags in photographic images.

Version 9.17

15th January 2013

This release delivers some UI improvements.

Version 9.16

28th November 2012

This release fixes a manual sorting bug.

Version 9.15

18th October 2012

This releases adds the ability to limit file names to a specific set of letters.

Version 9.14

12th September 2012

This releases fixes a number of minor improvements and fixes.

Version 9.13

21st August 2012

This is a bug fix release.

Version 9.12

20th August 2012

The new version improves integration with the Mac App Store version.

Version 9.11

2nd August 2012

The new version automatically upgrades old droplets to the new Mountain Lion-compatible version.

Version 9.10

31st July 2012

This latest update fixes a startup problem.

Version 9.09

31st July 2012

This latest update fixes an intermittent droplet problem on Mountain Lion affecting some users.

Update: This problem was fixed with the Apple's 10.8.1 update.

Version 9.08

3rd July 2012

The new version is ready for Mountain Lion.

Version 9.07

26th June 2012

The new version optimizes drawing and artwork for the new MacBook Pro Retina Display.

The 9.07 update substantially reduces the download size, which ballooned up to 24Mb due to the larger artwork and is now back down to 5.7Mb.

Version 9.06

26th June 2012

The new version optimizes drawing and artwork for the new MacBook Pro Retina Display.

Version 9.05

20th June 2012

The new version improves the manual ordering feature by letting you drag multiple items in the preview simultaneously.

Version 9.04

15th May 2012

The shooting date now defaults to the "Time Date Digitized" timestamp if neither "Time Date Original" nor relevant TIFF information is found.

Version 9.03

18th April 2012

The new version enables you to automatically migrate presets from version 8.

In order to use this feature, go to the "File" menu and choose "Migrate Version 8 Presets...".

Version 9.02

7th March 2012

This minor update fixes a problem that would make the "drag your files and folder here" graphic appear blurry in certain situations.

Version 9.01

1st March 2012

You can now automatically migrate the droplets that you created with version 8 to the new version by selecting "Migrate Version 8 Droplet..." from the "File" menu.

Version 9.0

29th February 2012

A Better Finder Rename 9 features a beautiful, re-designed single window user experience, the abilitity to re-order items in the preview list via drag & drop and it provides acess to over one hundred image, photo, color, camera, lens, music and date meta-data tags.

This is the first full version update of A Better Finder Rename since 2008 and we hope you will enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed developing it!

Version 8.95

29th February 2012

This version is primarily aimed at delivery to existing users via the auto-update feature and provides information about the version 9 upgrade out today.

Version 8.94

4th January 2012

The new version if necessary attempts to perform renames using a range of different renaming mechanisms to ensure better compatibility with third party and remote file systems.

Version 8.93

6th December 2011

The new version fixes a bug in the id3 tag reading engine.

Version 8.92

2nd November 2011

The new version now supports full screen mode in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Version 8.91

19th October 2011

The new version improves the thumbnail preview in the confirmation dialog and squashes a potential crashing bug.

Note: Version 8.90 was only released on the App Store, but contains only a partial fix for the crashing bug mentioned above. It should make this issue much less frequent but does not totally eliminate it. Version 8.91 will be submitted to the Mac App Store today, but will need to go through the approval process which can take up to two weeks.

Version 8.89

28th September 2011

The new version adds the ability to expand camel case.

Version 8.88

8th September 2011

This new version makes a very minor change to meet Mac App Store submission guidelines.

Version 8.87

7th September 2011

This new version fixes a minor problem with the new music tag reading engine.

Version 8.86

17th August 2011

This new version adds support for reading music meta information in FLAC, AIFF, M4V, OGG and APE files.

Version 8.85

20th July 2011

This new version introduces a new "Lion mode" for renaming files more efficiently on Mac OS X 10.7.

This mode is automatically pre-selected when the program is first run on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Version 8.84

14th July 2011

The new version fixes a problem that would cause the new ID3 tag reading engine not to find track number and CD number information.

Version 8.83

12th July 2011

The new version adds a new ID3 tag reading engine that can process your music files up to ten times faster than the old engine.

Version 8.82

15th June 2011

The new version deals more gracefully with symbolic links.

Version 8.81

10th May 2011

This release improves the way that progress information is displayed:

  • progress is shown within the main window rather than a separate window
  • interactive renaming dialogs appear as sheets rather than modal dialogs
  • the multi-step interface drawer closes automatically during renaming and re-opens on completetion

The new version also contains a number of minor bug fixes.

Version 8.80

20th April 2011

This release fixes a crashing bug reported yesterday and a cosmetic problem.

Version 8.79

6th April 2011

This is a maintance release addressing a number of minor issues.

  • fixed an unlocking problem affecting customers using Eastern European character encodings
  • fixed preview for file names whose parent folder contains a percent sign
  • fixed spelling mistake
  • improved debugging information is logged to the console
  • A Better Finder Rename 8 is now compiled using the latest XCode 4 developer tools with the LLVM 2.0 compiler

Version 8.78

9th March 2011

This release fixes a color space problem that made some JPEG file previews seem hazy and makes a number of minor tweaks now that new A Better Finder Rename 8 releases have abandonned Leopard-compatibility.

Version 8.77

28th February 2011

This is the first Snow Leopard only release of A Better Finder Rename. The internals of the program have been thoroughly modernized and a lot of Mac OS X 10.5 legacy code has been removed in preparation for work starting on ensuring that A Better Finder Rename will be fully Mac OS X 10.7 Lion-compatible.

Version 8.76

15th February 2011

This release adds an option to allow the logging of debug information to the console to be switched off. We recommend that you leave this switched on as it greatly facilitates debugging and helps us provide you with a bug-free product.

This is also probably going to be the last Mac OS 10.5 Leopard compatible release.

We usually support the current version of Mac OS X and one previous version to allow customers plenty of time to upgrade.

Apple has, however, made a number of moves in the last few weeks that make it harder than ever to maintain backwards compatibility. The Mac App Store requires that code be targeted to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Apple's XCode 4 development tools that have gone to Gold Master last week have dropped the Mac OS X 10.5 SDK and PowerPC support entirely.

We now spend a lot of time maintaining backwards compatibility and separate code bases and A Better Finder Rename is dragging a lot of legacy code, such as preferences panes, contextual menu plug-ins and PowerPC compatibility around with it.

In other words, the time has come to get ready for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and drop Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility a few months early.

Obviously, the current, I hope you'll agree, very capable 8.76 release will remain on the website indefinitely and we've made sure that the auto-update feature won't overwrite your current version with an incompatible Mac OS X 10.6-only version by mistake.

For Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard users, the next few point releases will deliver a smaller, faster and modernized A Better Finder Rename.

Version 8.75

29th January 2011

This is a minor release making it easier to purchase from the Mac App Store.

Version 8.74

26th January 2011

This release adds the option for new users to buy A Better Finder Rename 8 from the Mac App Store.

A Better Finder Rename is now available on the Mac App Store under the name "Better Rename 8".

Apple asked us to change the product name to remove the "Finder" reference.

A Better Finder Rename 8 will continue to be available from our own web site and we will obviously honour forever upgrades and continue to offer discounted major upgrades and bundles. In other words, nothing will change for existing customers nor will new customers be treated any different.

The decision to buy on the Mac App Store or directly from us is a matter of your personal preference. We are happy either way.

Please understand that if you buy from the Mac App Store, you buy into Apple's way of running things and we us developers have very limited influence over how Apple manages the Mac App Store.

Version 8.73

19th January 2011

This release adds two new text moving actions:

  • Move text in front of existing text
  • Move text after existing text

Version 8.72

23rd December 2010

This release fixes the droplet feature which was broken amid Mac App Store changes for version 8.71. Sorry.

Version 8.71

14th December 2010

This release delivers the first installement of new text moving actions.

  • Move text to position
  • Move text to front
  • Move text to end

Version 8.70

10th November 2010

This release makes performance and memory management improvements.

Version 8.69

13th October 2010

This release makes further improvements to the unicode handling.

Version 8.68

30th September 2010

This is a minor update that:

  • allows for larger starting values for sequence numbers
  • updates uninstall instructions for Snow Leopard

Version 8.67

15th September 2010

This release adds new options for inserting space saving alphabetical sequences into file names.

Version 8.66

6th September 2010

This release fixes a bug in the 'Insert Sequence Number At Position' renaming action introduced in the last release.

Version 8.65

25th August 2010

This release adds the abilitity to insert file path components to the front or the back of existing text or at a particular position.

Version 8.64

11th August 2010

This release introduces a new category of renaming actions allowing you to insert path components in a variety of ways.

Version 8.63

21st July 2010

The new release improves the compatibility of the "rename from file list" feature with tab delimited text files exported from Mircosoft Excel.

Version 8.62

14th July 2010

The new release adds new renaming actions to the folder name category:

  • insert folder name at position
  • insert folder name in front of existing text
  • insert folder name at the end of existing text

Version 8.61

23rd June 2010

The new release fixes a rare crashing bug.

Version 8.60

2nd June 2010

The new release provides three additional ways of inserting roman numerals into file names:

  • insert in front of existing text
  • insert to end of existing text
  • insert at position

Version 8.59

10th May 2010

The new release updates the help book with advice on how to best handle very large renaming jobs.

Version 8.58

20th April 2010

The new release allows the automatic loading of EXIF information for image files to be switched off.

This can result in a huge performance boost for all renaming actions that do not require this information, especially when working with large files over a network.

Disabling the feature will, however, lead to incorrect sorting when using the EXIF information.

Our advice would be to leave the option switched on unless you are looking at very large jobs over a network.

Version 8.57

13th April 2010

This new release adds an option to disable the Quick Look thumbnail creation for the confirmation dialog.

While it can be a great help to see a thumbnail of each picture or document that you are about to rename, if you are working with very large file sizes (e.g. digital camera raw files, medical scans, huge PDFs, etc.) or with files on a slow server, the thumbnail creation can become very slow.

As this is not such a common scenario, by default thumbnail creation remains switched off.

For those special jobs, however, where the thumbnail creation process is slowing you down, you can now disable it in the "Preferences..." dialog and you will be presented with the item's icon instead.

Version 8.56

7th April 2010

This release adds support for random sorting in the sequence number, roman numerals and alphabetical sequence renaming actions.

Version 8.55

23rd March 2010

This release fixes a minor bug that would allow the multi-step drawer to be closed but not re-opened under a set of infrequent conditions.

Version 8.54

10th March 2010

The new release allows droplets to be locked so that they cannot be edited by double clicking them. This can be useful for system administrators who need to distribute droplets to end-user and want to avoid them being edited by mistake.

Version 8.53

3rd March 2010

This release adds a new action that removes all diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc) from file names.

Version 8.52

24th February 2010

This release further improves the handling of international character sets and fixes a minor bug.

Version 8.51

2nd February 2010

This release adds a new "Replace using regular expressions" action to the "Advanced & Special" category that acts in a way familiar to most software developers and unix geeks.

The action that was formerly known under that name is still available as "Re-arrange using regular expressions" and continues to work as before. You should not have any problems with your existing droplets or presets.

Please note that regular expressions are an advanced feature, that may be completely unsuitable for casual computer users. They are very powerful, but basically also represent a particularly cryptic programming language in their own right and have a big learning curve. The documentation links to external resources for learning about regular expressions.

Version 8.50

29th January 2010

This new release fixes a problem introduced by the additional safety checks in version 8.49 released two days ago.

The problem occured only when you were attempting to change the case of a file name (e.g. convert to uppercase, lowercase, sentence case). In this scenario version 8.49 would refuse to rename the file because a file of the same name already existed (HFS+ is case preserving but not case sensitive).

Version 8.49

27th January 2010

This is a recommended update for all 8.x users. It fixes an extremely rare but potentially serious bug.

Version 8.48

20th January 2010

This is a minor update that removes the current restriction of the step value in the sequence number actions having to be no greater than 255.

Version 8.47

6th January 2010

This new version replaces the old RegExLib regular expression library with its modern RegExLibLite counterpart that uses the ICU library that is built into Leopard and Snow Leopard. This should result in faster regular expressions processing and more elegant international character set handling, as well as cutting down on the application size.

The next version of A Better Finder Rename 8 will deliver further enhancements based on this new library. There are detailed differences between the old and the new libraries, but this should not have much effect on run-of-the-mill regular expressions use. Please consult the "Help" menu for more information.

The new version also makes the accurate but very slow calculation of folder sizes introduced in 8.43 optional and switches it off by default. If you need accurate folder and bundle sizes you can switch this feature on in the preferences. Calculating the size of a folder involves calculating the size of all the files and sub-folders that it contains and can thus be very slow (try Get Info... in the Finder). This speed penality can't be justified if like most people you never use the "sort by file size" feature.

Version 8.46

21st December 2009

The new version fixes a minor bug that could cause the preset description not to be saved correctly.

Version 8.45

9th December 2009

The new version fixes two minor bugs:

  • full posix path file lists are now correctly recognized again
  • a rare bug in the "remove a range of characters" action

Version 8.44

2nd December 2009

The new version adds support for using roman numerals in file names.

You can produce a roman numeral list (e.g. Chapter I, Chapter II, etc.) or insert roman numerals at the beginning or end of the file name.

Version 8.43

30th November 2009

The new version now correctly calculates the size of bundle files.

Version 8.42

24th November 2009

Improves unicode support for better international character set support.

Version 8.41

19th November 2009

This bug fix release is a recommended upgrade for all users of versions 8.39 and 8.40.

Version 8.39 introduced a regression that broke the handling of case sensitive file names.

Version 8.40

18th November 2009

This release makes signifcant improvements to the "rename from file list" feature.

It introduces a new simplified way of specifying current name/ new name pairs in tab delimited text files to complement the existing full path/ new name format. It also features several minor improvements in error reporting, saving file lists, updates the documentation regarding these features, etc.

Version 8.39

16th November 2009

This release addresses a potentially serious bug and is a recommended upgrade for all A Better Finder Rename 8 users.

Version 8.38

11th November 2009

This releases fixes a bug affecting fast typists only.

Version 8.37

9th November 2009

The new release dramatically speeds up the file comments (aka spotlight comments) protection feature introduced in the previous version.

Version 8.36

28th October 2009

The new release is a recommended upgrade for all A Better Finder Rename 8 users with an up-to-date Leopard or Snow Leopard installation.

It prevents file comment comment loss by explictly copying the file comments from the old file to the "new" file. This behaviour can be switchd off in the preferences but is switched on by default.

Apple's file comment (aka Spotlight comment) implementation is notoriously fragile with file comments disappearing for all kinds of reasons, including moving files to non HFS+ volumes, deleting .DS_Store files, moving files outside of the Finder (e.g. via the terminal), saving documents to new locations, archiving and un-archiving files, putting them under version control, etc, etc. For that reason, we strongly advise against using file comments to keep track of important data.

It appears that after taking several years to (recently) fix file comment loss for many standard API calls, Apple have managed to "break" file comments again with recent updates to Leopard and Snow Leopard (worked on 10.6.0). It is thus possible that you will lose file comments if you use previous versions of A Better Finder Rename.

Version 8.35

26th October 2009

This release fixes a cosmetic issue on Snow Leopard and enables Command-W closing of the application.

Earlier today, version 8.34 was posted with a minor display bug. If you have downloaded that version please update it.

Version 8.33

21st October 2009

This release contains significant improvements to the handling of unlock codes and should make unlocking the product significantly less error prone.

Version 8.32

5th October 2009

Fixes a rare problem with composed unicode characters affecting the "rename from file list" feature.

Version 8.31

1st October 2009

The new release allows A Better Finder Rename to be used as part of your ImageCapture workflow on Snow Leopard.

Version 8.30

23rd September 2009

The new release includes a new version of the preferences pane that handles system with a legacy A Better Finder Launcher installation more gracefully.

It also fixes a minor bug where the number of renamed files was reported incorrectly under particular circumstances.

Version 8.29

16th September 2009

Addresses a problem when trying to rename files containing a forward slash on Snow Leopard.

Version 8.28

9th September 2009

Snow Leopard specific changes only:

  • fixes crash when reading a lot of mp3 tags
  • help book updated with instructions on how to get the "A Better Finder Rename 8..." service to appear in the Finder's contextual menu
  • preference pane updated
  • uninstalls pre-Snow Leopard components that are no loner required

Version 8.27

12th August 2009

This release adds an "A Better Finder Rename 8..." menu item to the services menu and allows A Better Finder Rename to be started by selecting files in the Finder or other applications via the "Services" menu.

This also means that the new release is now Snow Leopard compatible.

Version 8.26

29th July 2009

This release contains a number of enhancements:

  • 64-bit mode is re-enabled for PowerPC G5 users; this should provide a big performance boost on PowerPC-based Macs. If you experience any problems, please let me know immediately!
  • conflict resolution performance is optimized for a special case
  • error reporting is improved with a numeric stack trace

Version 8.25

23rd July 2009

This release contains multiple bug fixes for rare multi-threading issues:

  • preview thread could potentially become stuck
  • preview thread could potentially fail

The new release also improves the regular expression matching algorithm to more elegantly deal with unicode composed character sequences (e.g. French accents, umlauts, etc).

Version 8.24

12th July 2009

Fixes a bug affecting 8.23.

Version 8.23

8th July 2009

The new release adds new ways of using MP3/AAC tags to rename rename music files:

  • add tags at the front of the file name
  • add tags to the front of existing text
  • add tags at the end of the file name
  • add tags after existings text
  • add tags at position

Other changes:

  • preference pane now correctly reports A Better Finder Attributes update information
  • fixed a potential crashing bug
  • refined music tags actions on screen layout
  • other minor refinements and fixes

Version 8.22

25th June 2009

This release fixes a display issue with file names that contain forward slashes.

Version 8.21

10th June 2009

This release delivers significant performance improvements and focuses on optimizing the renaming and file name computation.

  • much faster "prepare for renaming" stage
  • much faster preview when using the multi-step rename interface
  • lower memory utilization
  • spelling mistakes corrected
  • improved error reporting

This is the last of our performance and scalability related releases for a while and most users should notice dramatic speed improvements, especially on large renaming jobs.

Version 8.20

28th May 2009

The new version provides easy all-in-one error reporting and fixes compatibility with some G5-based systems.

Version 8.19

27th May 2009

This new version delivers an order of magnitude speed improvement for the conflict resolution feature.

Further improvements:

  • main window now has a close buttion in the title bar
  • file name swapping is now more reliable
  • addresses a rare situation where the renaming engine could potentially have locked
  • the action drawer now draws and resizes correctly despite a Leopard GC bug
  • improved error reporting

Version 8.18

6th May 2009

The new version features an improved renaming engine that is faster, uses less memory and can process larger rename jobs.

It also resolves a crashing issue that affected some Mac OS X configurations under version 8.17.

Version 8.17

24th April 2009

This release fixes problems on older Macs equipped with 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors.

Version 8.16

23rd April 2009

This release cleans up some problems with yesterday's 8.15 release.

The move to 64-bit did not go as well with "The Big Mean Folder Machine" a few months ago and some bugs crept in that this releases fixes.

  • The automatic updates that are downloaded by the application are now digitally signed to added security
  • the Finder contextual menu now works correctly again
  • the main window focuses correctly upon launch

Version 8.15

22nd April 2009

This release takes A Better Finder Rename 8 to a 64-bit garbage collected architecture and prepares the ground for important scalability and performance improvements that we hope to deliver in the next two releases.

A direct link to our brand-new support forums has been added to the "Help" menu and minor updates to the optional contextual menu plugin, hot key and system preferences modules are included.

Note also that our version numbering scheme has changed. Instead of the 8.x.x numbering we now use a 8.x scheme, where the "x" is simply the release number. This gives us more room for more frequent updates now that we have the automatic update feature firmly in place. Sorry if this causes any confusion for long term users; it's new but once you get used to the idea it's a win-win.

Version 8.1.4

1st April 2009

This is the latest stable release and the release you'll get by downloading directly from the website. The new 64-bit version is still plagued by a crashing bug on some systems. We hope to have solved the problem within the next few days.

This release fixes a bug affecting file name conflict resolution resolution.

Version 8.1.3

27th March 2009

This release fixes a bug affecting the conversion to legal Windows NTFS/SMB and Mac OS 9 file names.

Version 8.1.2

18th March 2009

The new version protects iPhoto and iTunes libraries from accidental damage.

You should never directly rename files that are under the control of management application such as iPhoto and iTunes because you risk damaging meta-data held by such applications, such as albums, play lists, etc. You should first export the files you want to rename before changing their names.

A Better Finder Rename 8 now brings up a warning dialog when you attempt to make such a modification.

Version 8.1.1

18th February 2009

This release improves the usability of the "Remove specific characters" and "Replace specific characters" actions to avoid confusion with similar text-based features.

Version 8.1

9th February 2009

This release focuses on performance and memory utilization. The conflict resolution stage is now much faster for large jobs and the performance of all stages of the renaming pipeline has been improved.

Version 8.0.9

27th January 2009

This fixes a problem with the new preview list refresh feature introduced in 8.0.8. The preview is now correctly refreshed when the renaming operation is cancelled.

Version 8.0.8

14th January 2009

This release makes a long requested change to the behavior of the program.

  • the preview list is no longer cleared at the end of a renaming session

This enables you to perform multiple renames one step at a time, but in general you should still prefer using the multi-step renaming feature, because this only resolves file name conflicts once and not multiple times giving you a cleaner result if intermediary steps cause file name conflicts.

The new behavior is switched on by default, so if you prefer the old behavior you need to switch it off in the "Preferences..." dialog box.

Version 8.0.7

22nd December 2008

In a recent Mac OS X update, Apple have corrected a long standing bug that affected the renaming of files containing the forward slash character. This has made the workaround used by A Better Finder Rename to remedy this bug obsolete and prevented it from renaming such files correctly itself. This new release removes the workaround and restores A Better Finder Rename's ability to rename to file names containing forward slashes.

Version 8.0.6

17th December 2008

This release fixes a bug in the preference pane component.

Version 8.0.5

10th December 2008

This new release adds the ability to remove blocks of numbers from existing file names.

Version 8.0.4

25th November 2008

The new release adds new renaming actions to the Date & Time category:

  • Insert date/ time in front of existing text
  • Insert date/ time after existing text
  • Insert date/ time at position

It also contains a number of minor improvements and fixes.

Version 8.0.3

3rd November 2008

The new release provides the option of switching off the automatic file name conflict resolution feature during the preview. When handling large numbers of files this can dramatically speed up the previewing speed of the application since the conflict resolution is the most time-consuming part of the preview computation.

You can switch the conflict resolution on or off in the little "gear" menu under preview table at any moment. By default it is switched off, so you'll need to switch it on explicitly to preview conflict resolution results.

Whatever the preview settings, conflict resolution is always performed before any files are renamed.

In addition, the new version also adds a few new conflict resolution schemes.

Version 8.0.2

27th October 2008

The new version fixes a date sorting bug affecting only dates before the 1st of January 2000.

Version 8.0.1

14th October 2008

This new version adds three new ways of adding image dimensions to the file names.

Version 8.0

17th September 2008

Three years, 48 point releases and 7 betas after version 7 was released in 2005, A Better Finder Rename 8 is finally shipping.

This type of development effort is only made possible by the support of a dedicated team of alpha testers, who ensure that by the time the first public beta is released, the new version has already undergone extensive fault and acceptance testing.

Special Thanks to:

Extra special thanks to John Spannenburg who's managed to keep me up until late at night for the past few weeks :-)

Version 8.0 beta 7

9th September 2008

This is the first release candidate for version 8.0.

  • includes an Apple Help Book to replace online help
  • fixed a problem with droplet settings not being saved correctly
  • fixed a problem where settings were not preserved between runs

Version 8.0 beta 6

27th August 2008

  • faster conflict resolution
  • more accurate progress information
  • some cosmetic changes

Version 8.0 beta 5

19th August 2008

In this release:

  • introduces the new Saveable Presets feature
  • regular expressions action fixed
  • easier to use on smaller displays
  • context menu no longer displays entry for version 7, if this has been removed

Version 8.0 beta 4

11th August 2008

In this release:

  • the automatic conflict resolution feature now behaves correctly
  • the "silent" setting of droplets is now respected
  • the progress information dialog now appears without delay

Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade.

Version 8.0 beta 3

7th August 2008

This release fixes a crashing bug introduced in yesterday's second beta.

Version 8.0 beta 2

6th August 2008

This is the second public beta of A Better Finder Rename 8.

Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade.

This second beta:

  • fixes a rare bug that affects only complex renames
  • correctly shows the hot key component settings in the System Preferences pane, even if no previous version of A Better Finder Rename is installed
  • delivers an approximate speed increase of 30%
  • upgrades the Sparkle software update framework
  • adds a shortcut key for activating the multi-step interface
  • makes a few cosmetic improvements

You can download the new beta release from the download page, or via the automatic update feature ("Check for Update..." in the "A Better Finder Rename 8" menu).

Version 8.0 beta 1

4th August 2008

This is the first public beta of A Better Finder Rename 8.

Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade.

Here are some of the highlights of the new version:

  • New User Interface
    • fully resizable single window with larger preview area
    • renaming actions are now organized into 7 intuitive categories
    • and too many other refinements to list individually
  • New Renaming Engine
    • is now database-backed for larger renames and more advanced features
    • automatically resolves file name conflicts by inserting configurable distinguishers at the end of conflicting file names
    • previews all files that will be renamed (no longer limited to 250 items)
    • fully multi-threaded means that the UI never blocks even when previewing or renaming large renaming jobs
    • optimizes the order in which items are renamed so as to avoid "deadlocks" (i.e. situations where one file can't be renamed because a previous file has not yet been renamed)
    • extensive progress information is provided at each stage (no more beach balling)
  • automatic software updates via Sparkle

The major missing feature from this first beta are save-able presets, a much requested feature that will definitely make it into the final release.

You can download the beta release from the download page.

Version 7.9.9.3

31st July 2008

Like the last minor release this one was prompted by an alpha tester finding a bug in the forthcoming version 8 (beta 1 probably out next week!) that also affects version 7.

The new release fixes a memory leak in the "Add Image Dimensions" rename action.

Version 7.9.9.2

16th July 2008

While development on version 8 is fast approaching the public beta stage, my alpha testers have discovered some bugs that go back to version 7..

  • remove vowels action fixed
  • replace with regular expression fixed
  • context menu, preference pane & hot key components updated in anticipation of version 8

Version 7.9.9.1

7th July 2008

Minor bug fix release: fixes contextual menu problems.

Version 7.9.9

25th June 2008

The new release adds support for UTF-16 ID3 tags in MP3 music files.

Version 7.9.8

21st May 2008

This is a minor update that improves the unlock procedure.

Version 7.9.7.1

2nd April 2008

Improved support for site licensing.

Version 7.9.7

20th February 2008

Adds a new "convert to sentence case" rename action.

Version 7.9.6.1

7th February 2008

Two minor bug fixes:

  • file names can now never include the illegal ":" character
  • droplet mode has been further bullet-proofed

Version 7.9.6

16th January 2008

It is now possible to add files to the preview using the Finder context menu while the programming is running.

Version 7.9.5.6

2nd January 2008

This is a minor bug fix update.

Version 7.9.5.5

19th December 2007

This version uses a more robust way of identifying and correctly ignoring invisible files during renames.

Version 7.9.5.1

10th December 2007

This is a very minor update that simply improves consistency between the program and the on-site screencast.

In the screencast the demonstrated action is called "Produce sequence number list" whereas we renamed this to "Create sequence number list" in the 7.9.5 release. This apparently has caught out a lot of people. Sorry about that. The name is back to the original now.

Version 7.9.5

28th November 2007

  • add image width and height to file name
  • action menu re-organized to make it easier to find the right action
  • hot key now inactive in applications other than the Finder

adds the ability to include an image's dimensions to the file name, re-organizes the action menu and fixes a minor bug.

Version 7.9.4.5

11th November 2007

This is a recommend update for all A Better Finder Rename users on Leopard.

It sets the correct default renaming mode appropriate for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Version 7.9.4

23rd October 2007

Improves the default sorting of the preview window and delivers full Leopard compatibility.

Version 7.9.3.5

18th October 2007

Fixes a bug affecting the "Rename from file list" feature.

Version 7.9.3

26th September 2007

Updates the preview window with an iTunes-like layout, tweaks the user interface for the multi-step rename feature and contains other minor refinements.

Version 7.9.2

29th August 2007

Makes further improvements to the multi-step rename feature:

  • improved user experience
  • improved error handling
  • new "Clear All" button
  • extensive internal changes

Version 7.9.1

8th August 2007

This is a minor bug fix release resolving a launch problem on Mac OS X 10.4.0 only.

Version 7.9

25th July 2007

Introduces a second sorting order for all renaming actions that use ordering.

The second sorting order will be used in situations where the first sorting order assigns the same rank to two or more items. Up to now the order in which items with identical rank appeared in the sort was essentially random.

Such situations are rare in normal operation, but with the advent of sub-second continuous shooting modes on modern SLR and SLR-like digital cameras, digital photos with identical EXIF timestamps are becoming more common.

Setting the first sorting order to "By EXIF digital camera date" and the second sorting order to "By name and sequence number" will allow you to maintain the proper ordering of continuous shooting mode pictures when creating new sequence numbers from the original file names.

Version 7.8.6

16th July 2007

Fixes a crashing bug introduced by a recent QuickTime update that affects only droplets.

Version 7.8.5

26th June 2007

This releases introduces "silent" droplets that are capable of being used in fully automated workflows without human supervision.

More information is available in the manual.

The are also various minor bug fixes and improvements especially in the confirmation dialog.

Version 7.8.1

11th June 2007

The new release fixes a bug affecting the "Add folder name to beginning" and "Add folder name to end" rename actions.

Version 7.8

23rd May 2007

The new version adds a few additional renaming actions to make the interface more easily understandable:

  • Remove specific characters
  • Remove text
  • Remove text from beginning
  • Remove text from end

The new release also updates the preferences pane component to correctly reflect the fact that all users who have purchased version 7 after the 1st of January 2007 will be given free upgrades to version 8 (including minor updates up to, but not including version 9.0)

Version 7.7.7

14th May 2007

This releases fixes two problems:

  • it removes the "ultra-safe, ultra-fast" renaming mode that was broken by a recent Mac OS X update
  • it now correctly encodes file lists as utf8 documents to help international users who require extensive character sets

Version 7.7.6

23rd April 2007

This release adds the "ultra-fast, ultra-safe" renaming mode, which uses the same renaming procedure as the Finder thus optimizing both speed and safety. This is now the default renaming mode.

A minor problem with the conflict resolution dialog is also solved.

Version 7.7.5

18th April 2007

The new release upgrades the mp3/mp4 tag reading code:

  • read m4a files correctly
  • read protected m4p files
  • read bookmark-able m4b files
  • added cd number and number of cds for aac files

and introduces new mp3 renaming options:

  • preferred & fallback patterns
  • handles textual track numbers in mp3 tags, e.g. "Track #4" instead of simply "4"

Version 7.7

14th March 2007

The new release

  • adds intelligent sequence number sorting
  • NFTS/SMB file name conversion now takes care of many exotic problems
  • in order to avoid confusion, you can no longer close the multi step drawer while the remaining action is switched off

Version 7.6.5

7th February 2007

The new release makes substantial improvements to the preview list:

  • adds multiple selection
  • adds drag & drop removal
  • adds a "clear" button
  • adds an explanatory table background

Version 7.6.1

5th February 2007

This bug fix releases resolves a problem affecting the ability to edit droplets.

Version 7.6

10th January 2007

The new version improves support for EXIF digital picture format to include the following:

  • JPEG
  • CRW, CR2, THM (Canon)
  • NEF (Nikon)
  • TIFF (Various Manufacturers)
  • RAF (Fuji)
  • ORF (Olympus)
  • MRW (Minolta)
  • DNG (Adobe Digital Negative)
  • SRF (Sony)

Version 7.5.6

8th December 2006

This new release is a recommend update for all 7.5.5 users. It fixes a startup problem.

Version 7.5.5

6th December 2006

The new version substantially improves the preview window, allowing it to be docked to the top, bottom or the right hand side and assisting with smart resizing and dragging.

The preview drawer is still available but the separate preview window now becomes the default.

The new release also adds new options for the date and time-based renaming actions.

This is the first release that requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later!

Version 7.5.1

1st December 2006

Fixes a minor menu error, where the positions of "Add sequence number to beginning" was accidentally swapped with "Add sequence number to end".

Version 7.5

8th November 2006

  • added the ability to use "alphabetical sequences" as well as sequence numbers for a more compact file name
  • added "Rename" and "Rename & Quit" menu items and shortcuts
  • remove m4p tag reading support forced by Apple imposing new technical restrictions on reading "FairPlay" songs
  • option to only include the files whose name is actually going to be changed when producing file lists
  • option to ignore case when reading in tab-delimited file lists (Improved support for case insensititive file systems)
  • minor UI improvement (tab order in "Replace Text")
  • correct handling of GarageBand bundled file format

Version 7.4.7

14th October 2006

The new version fixes the droplet editing feature that was accidentally broken in version 7.4.5.

Version 7.4.6

30th September 2006

The new version updates the optional program components: the systems preferences pane, hot key and contextual menu plugin.

Version 7.4.5

27th September 2006

  • rename & apply button replaced by option
  • fade out effect can now be switched on or off in the preferences
  • minor bug fix

Version 7.4

30th August 2006

  • adds new date and time formats
  • improves reliability of large drag and drop operations
  • warns of FileVault problems and suggests workaround
  • improves navigation to the product website
  • fixed spelling mistake in file list feature
  • fixed minor usability issues

Version 7.3.5

12th July 2006

Version 7.3.5 makes it easier than ever to use regular expressions to manipulate the file names through its new expression group preview.

Version 7.3

7th June 2006

The new adds version adds an "Apply" button, which performs a rename without closing the application.

You can vote to change the standard behavior of the tool by participating in our online poll.

Version 7.2.5

3rd May 2006

The new release focuses on improving performance on large rename batches of more than a few hundred files.

Other changes:

  • fixes a problem with the tab-delimited flavor of "Rename from file list"
  • smaller binary
  • fixes a problem with case changes and manual conflict resolution

Version 7.2.2

19th April 2006

The new version updates the System Preferences Pane and the Hot Key Component to address a minor installation bug.

Version 7.2.1

22nd March 2006

This release fixes a problem with case changes introduced in version 7.2 and is a recommend update for 7.2 users.

Version 7.2

22nd March 2006

The new version improves the way in which file name conflicts are handled. It already marks potential name conflicts with warning signs inside the preview and offers a conflict resolution dialog during renaming.

Version 7.1.5

15th February 2006

The new version adds improved RAW photo file handling:

  • adds support for Adobe's Digital Negative (DNG) format
  • adds experimental support for Canon's CR2 RAW format under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
  • adds experimental support for Nikon's NEF RAW format under Tiger Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

The new version also adds more date formats and fixes a startup bug.

Version 7.1

18th January 2006

The new release adds the ability to remove files from the preview window and further refines the preview feature. It is also the first Universal binary release of the product, meaning that it will run at native speeds on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes.

Version 7.0.5

14th December 2005

The new version corrects teething problems with the entirely rewritten 7.0 release.

In particular the tool now supports file names that contain forward slashes or composed unicode characters correctly, the hotkey component (if previously installed) is now upgraded automatically, minor UI glitches were fixed, etc.

The new version is a recommend upgrade for 7.0 users.

Version 7

16th November 2005

A Better Finder Rename 7 is the result of a complete 10-month rewrite of the 70,000+ lines of code that made up the version 6.9.5 release.

Version 7 was engineered from ground-up to take advantage of Mac OS X's Cocoa application frameworks to offer a best-of-breed Macintosh user experience.

We have taken the opportunity to improve nearly all aspects of A Better Finder Rename and there are countless small and not-so-small improvements.

Amongst other features, version 7 adds the long-awaited ability to combine a number of different rename action in a single rename.

Version 6.9.5

6th July 2005

The new release updates the hot key and preference pane components to provide an improved user experience:

  • system preference pane now displays all hot keys in a single table
  • user-defined hot key combinations run through a 'sanity check' to avoid problems with other applications
  • hot key component no longer installed by default
  • clean hot key installation and uninstallation from the system preference pane

Version 6.9.4

25th May 2005

This bug fix release correcting a sorting-related problem when you rename more than 1500 files at a time.

Version 6.9.3

13th May 2005

Fixes problems under Mac OS 10.3.

Version 6.9.2

12th May 2005

Fixes an installer bug.

Version 6.9.1

11th May 2005

This a bug fix release fixing the "Change Number" feature that allows you to pad numbers embedded in your file names (image1.gif) with additional zeros (image001.gif) or add and subtract values (image005.gif).

Version 6.9

13th April 2005

Version 6.9 now allows you not only to convert Macintosh files names to legal Windows NTFS file names, but also into account limitations of the SMB Windows file sharing service.

Version 6.8.5

23rd March 2005

The new version provides sentence and title case conversion for MP3 and AAC tags.

Version 6.8

23rd FEBRUARY 2005

A Better Finder Rename 6.8 provides a smart truncating feature which preserves file extensions wherever possible.

Version 6.7.5

26th January 2005

Allows the current date and time to be exploited for renaming files.

Version 6.7

1st December 2004

This update provides more advanced options for renaming MP3/AAC-encoded music files.

More information in the manual.

Version 6.6.6

17th November 2004

This minor update contains the new version of the System Preferences pane shared with the other A Better Finder series tools.

The System Preference Pane update:

  • allows the hot key to be changed to a wider variety of keys
  • displays registration details on all A Better Finder products
  • replaces the old Registration Assistant application
  • unloads the resident A Better Finder hot key application from memory when the feature is switched off

Version 6.6.5

4th NOVEMBER 2004

A Better Finder Rename now handles Apple iTunes AAC-encoded audio files as well as MP3 files.

Version 6.6

13th OCTOBER 2004

A Better Finder Rename can now read MP3 music tags, including:

  • artist
  • song title
  • album
  • track number
  • number of tracks

The new "Rename to MP3 information" action allows you to combine this information in a variety of ways.

The new feature uses Quicktime extensively and this means that the renaming may not be quite as fast as usual. We have provided a first level MP3 Tag cache to speed up interactive previewing.

Version 6.5.5

15th SEPTEMEBR 2004

The EXIF digital photo metadata support based on QuickTime technology introduced in version 6.4.5 proved to be accurate, but also slow. Something that became particularly obvious when dealing with large numbers of files.

This new release thus focuses on EXIF performance improvements:

  1. We have coded our own EXIF implementation which is between 10 and 100 times quicker than the QuickTime mechanism.
  2. We have also created a first level cache for date and EXIF metadata.

This has resulted in dramatically faster preview and rename performance for all EXIF or date-based actions.

Version 6.5

18th AUGUST 2004

The new version improves compatibility with FileVault and some third-party file systems and external or remote devices.

You can now choose between a "safe" mode which preserves file comments under Mac OS X but may not work on some third-party file systems, and the "fast" mode which will work with FileVault and under other non-standard configurations.

Version 6.4.5

14th JULY 2004

This is the second release that focuses on EXIF digital photo metadata. It adds supports for EXIF data in TIFF and Canon Raw (.CRW & .THM) format files; both formats are used by some professional grade digital cameras for loss-less image capture.

Version 6.4

16th JUNE 2004

The new version can use the date and time at which a digital camera picture was taken rather than relying on the picture's file creation date.

This information is extracted from the EXIF metadata embedded in the picture files produced by most leading camera manufacturers.

Version 6.3.5

19th MAY 2004

The new version allows the name of the enclosing folder to be added to the file name.

Version 6.3.1

24th APRIL 2004

This point release fixes a startup bug affecting first-time users. It is a recommended upgrade for all 6.3 users.

Version 6.3

21st APRIL 2004

The new version introduces regular expression substitution. This advanced renaming technique will be familiar to BBEdit users, UNIX veterans and most programmers. It may prove inappropriate for novice computer users.

The A Better Finder Rename implementation covers:

  • PCRE - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
  • substitution expressions
  • graphical display of expressions groups
  • quick guide to regular expressions usage

The new version also improves the error reporting and handling.

Version 9.54

21st October 2015

Minor release notes version 10 has shipped.

Version 9.53

7th September 2015

Minor release notes version 10 beta 1 is out.

Version 9.52

29th July 2015

This release improves behaviour when an attempt to rename files on read-only media is made.

Version 9.51

10th June 2015

This release fixes a minor bug and features a lot of behind the scenes changes.

Version 9.50

28th April 2015

This release improves the startup behaviour.

Version 9.49

24th March 2015

This release fixes a bug in the regular expressions implementation.

Version 9.48

17th March 2015

This release modernizes the preview table implementation and fixes a number of minor bugs.

Version 9.47

17th March 2015

This release was only out for a few hours and contains a major bug. Please update to version 9.48 or later to correct this.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Version 9.46

25th February 2015

This release refines the preferences dialog.

Version 9.45

11th February 2015

This release adds a new tag that allows users to insert the contents of the clipboard into file names.

Version 9.44

22nd January 2015

This release fixes the "Show Invisibles" preview option that allows you to see invisible characters, such as spaces and tabs.

Version 9.43

3rd December 2014

This release fixes a multi-threading issue.

Version 9.42

19th November 2014

This release fixes a sorting bug related to Yosemite's sqlite database.

Version 9.41

5th November 2014

This release adopts a new "flatter" look to blend more easily with the refreshed Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite user interface.

The new look is only applied on Yosemite, so the application should look much the same on older Mac OS X versions.

Version 9.40

24th September 2014

This release features a major overhaul of the music tag renaming actions.

The user interface is brought in line with the "Tag-Based Renaming" actions and now features a drag & drop based token interface.

We have also added a number of advanced AAC and MP3 tags to the tag library.

Version 9.39

20th August 2014

This release makes a minor improvement to the "Change Existing Number" action.

Version 9.38

28th July 2014

This release solves a rare crashing bug.

Version 9.37

22nd July 2014

This release adds online crash reporting to help us more quickly identify stability issues in future.

Version 9.36

18th June 2014

This release improves stability under heavy load.

We appear to have had some issues due to changes in how Xcode's LLVM compiler deals with multi-threaded memory management.

A great thank you to the people who have quickly reported these issues. Please remember that we can only fix bugs that we know about and that some bugs simply do not occur on all Mac models and configurations.

Please let us know immediately if you find a crashing bug, so we can react quickly!

Version 9.34/5

17th June 2014

This release fixes an intermittent bug that has been causing trouble for many users.

It looks like this was a multi-threading bug that has been around since version 8.0, but never manifested until the latest Mavericks updates.

We are genuinely sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Version 9.33

5th June 2014

This release ensures that A Better Finder Rename will retain its file selection when you auto-update in the future.

Version 9.32

6th May 2014

This release fixes inaccuracies in the progress reporting.

Version 9.31

19th March 2014

This release improves droplets on Mavericks.

Version 9.30

27th January 2014

This release is the first to adopt the modern Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) memory management architecture and thus benefits from significant performance gains in some areas.

Version 9.29

14th January 2014

This release introduces the new <ShootingDateSubSecond> tag.

Version 9.28

10th December 2013

This new release makes a series of small enhancements and minor bug fixes.

Version 9.27

20th November 2013

This new release fixes a minor bug that could make A Better Finder Rename fail without an error message.

Version 9.26

15th October 2013

This new release finally retires our beloved multi-step action drawer and replaces it with a more modern design.

Version 9.25

23rd September 2013

This latest version fixes a bug in the "Keep Specific Characters" action.

Version 9.24

14th August 2013

This latest version adds the ability to display invisible/ non-printing characters in the file name preview.

Version 9.23

16th July 2013

This release adds a shortcut for going full screen.

Version 9.22

2nd July 2013

This release adds keyboard shortcuts for removing individual items from the preview list and for clearing the entire list.

Version 9.21

18th June 2013

This release makes it easier to join our new opt-in mailing list.

Version 9.20

11th June 2013

This release improves the unlocking mechanism to handle additional special cases.

Version 9.19

6th March 2013

This release adds support for reading meta-data tags in a variety of video formats.

Version 9.18

30th January 2013

This release adds support for the global position system (GPS) tags in photographic images.

Version 9.17

15th January 2013

This release delivers some UI improvements.

Version 9.16

28th November 2012

This release fixes a manual sorting bug.

Version 9.15

18th October 2012

This releases adds the ability to limit file names to a specific set of letters.

Version 9.14

12th September 2012

This releases fixes a number of minor improvements and fixes.

Version 9.13

21st August 2012

This is a bug fix release.

Version 9.12

20th August 2012

The new version improves integration with the Mac App Store version.

Version 9.11

2nd August 2012

The new version automatically upgrades old droplets to the new Mountain Lion-compatible version.

Version 9.10

31st July 2012

This latest update fixes a startup problem.

Version 9.09

31st July 2012

This latest update fixes an intermittent droplet problem on Mountain Lion affecting some users.

Update: This problem was fixed with the Apple's 10.8.1 update.

Version 9.08

3rd July 2012

The new version is ready for Mountain Lion.

Version 9.07

26th June 2012

The new version optimizes drawing and artwork for the new MacBook Pro Retina Display.

The 9.07 update substantially reduces the download size, which ballooned up to 24Mb due to the larger artwork and is now back down to 5.7Mb.

Version 9.06

26th June 2012

The new version optimizes drawing and artwork for the new MacBook Pro Retina Display.

Version 9.05

20th June 2012

The new version improves the manual ordering feature by letting you drag multiple items in the preview simultaneously.

Version 9.04

15th May 2012

The shooting date now defaults to the "Time Date Digitized" timestamp if neither "Time Date Original" nor relevant TIFF information is found.

Version 9.03

18th April 2012

The new version enables you to automatically migrate presets from version 8.

In order to use this feature, go to the "File" menu and choose "Migrate Version 8 Presets...".

Version 9.02

7th March 2012

This minor update fixes a problem that would make the "drag your files and folder here" graphic appear blurry in certain situations.

Version 9.01

1st March 2012

You can now automatically migrate the droplets that you created with version 8 to the new version by selecting "Migrate Version 8 Droplet..." from the "File" menu.

Version 9.0

29th February 2012

A Better Finder Rename 9 features a beautiful, re-designed single window user experience, the abilitity to re-order items in the preview list via drag & drop and it provides acess to over one hundred image, photo, color, camera, lens, music and date meta-data tags.

This is the first full version update of A Better Finder Rename since 2008 and we hope you will enjoy using it as much as we enjoyed developing it!

Version 8.95

29th February 2012

This version is primarily aimed at delivery to existing users via the auto-update feature and provides information about the version 9 upgrade out today.

Version 8.94

4th January 2012

The new version if necessary attempts to perform renames using a range of different renaming mechanisms to ensure better compatibility with third party and remote file systems.

Version 8.93

6th December 2011

The new version fixes a bug in the id3 tag reading engine.

Version 8.92

2nd November 2011

The new version now supports full screen mode in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Version 8.91

19th October 2011

The new version improves the thumbnail preview in the confirmation dialog and squashes a potential crashing bug.

Note: Version 8.90 was only released on the App Store, but contains only a partial fix for the crashing bug mentioned above. It should make this issue much less frequent but does not totally eliminate it. Version 8.91 will be submitted to the Mac App Store today, but will need to go through the approval process which can take up to two weeks.

Version 8.89

28th September 2011

The new version adds the ability to expand camel case.

Version 8.88

8th September 2011

This new version makes a very minor change to meet Mac App Store submission guidelines.

Version 8.87

7th September 2011

This new version fixes a minor problem with the new music tag reading engine.

Version 8.86

17th August 2011

This new version adds support for reading music meta information in FLAC, AIFF, M4V, OGG and APE files.

Version 8.85

20th July 2011

This new version introduces a new "Lion mode" for renaming files more efficiently on Mac OS X 10.7.

This mode is automatically pre-selected when the program is first run on Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

Version 8.84

14th July 2011

The new version fixes a problem that would cause the new ID3 tag reading engine not to find track number and CD number information.

Version 8.83

12th July 2011

The new version adds a new ID3 tag reading engine that can process your music files up to ten times faster than the old engine.

Version 8.82

15th June 2011

The new version deals more gracefully with symbolic links.

Version 8.81

10th May 2011

This release improves the way that progress information is displayed:

  • progress is shown within the main window rather than a separate window
  • interactive renaming dialogs appear as sheets rather than modal dialogs
  • the multi-step interface drawer closes automatically during renaming and re-opens on completetion

The new version also contains a number of minor bug fixes.

Version 8.80

20th April 2011

This release fixes a crashing bug reported yesterday and a cosmetic problem.

Version 8.79

6th April 2011

This is a maintance release addressing a number of minor issues.

  • fixed an unlocking problem affecting customers using Eastern European character encodings
  • fixed preview for file names whose parent folder contains a percent sign
  • fixed spelling mistake
  • improved debugging information is logged to the console
  • A Better Finder Rename 8 is now compiled using the latest XCode 4 developer tools with the LLVM 2.0 compiler

Version 8.78

9th March 2011

This release fixes a color space problem that made some JPEG file previews seem hazy and makes a number of minor tweaks now that new A Better Finder Rename 8 releases have abandonned Leopard-compatibility.

Version 8.77

28th February 2011

This is the first Snow Leopard only release of A Better Finder Rename. The internals of the program have been thoroughly modernized and a lot of Mac OS X 10.5 legacy code has been removed in preparation for work starting on ensuring that A Better Finder Rename will be fully Mac OS X 10.7 Lion-compatible.

Version 8.76

15th February 2011

This release adds an option to allow the logging of debug information to the console to be switched off. We recommend that you leave this switched on as it greatly facilitates debugging and helps us provide you with a bug-free product.

This is also probably going to be the last Mac OS 10.5 Leopard compatible release.

We usually support the current version of Mac OS X and one previous version to allow customers plenty of time to upgrade.

Apple has, however, made a number of moves in the last few weeks that make it harder than ever to maintain backwards compatibility. The Mac App Store requires that code be targeted to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Apple's XCode 4 development tools that have gone to Gold Master last week have dropped the Mac OS X 10.5 SDK and PowerPC support entirely.

We now spend a lot of time maintaining backwards compatibility and separate code bases and A Better Finder Rename is dragging a lot of legacy code, such as preferences panes, contextual menu plug-ins and PowerPC compatibility around with it.

In other words, the time has come to get ready for Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and drop Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard compatibility a few months early.

Obviously, the current, I hope you'll agree, very capable 8.76 release will remain on the website indefinitely and we've made sure that the auto-update feature won't overwrite your current version with an incompatible Mac OS X 10.6-only version by mistake.

For Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard users, the next few point releases will deliver a smaller, faster and modernized A Better Finder Rename.

Version 8.75

29th January 2011

This is a minor release making it easier to purchase from the Mac App Store.

Version 8.74

26th January 2011

This release adds the option for new users to buy A Better Finder Rename 8 from the Mac App Store.

A Better Finder Rename is now available on the Mac App Store under the name "Better Rename 8".

Apple asked us to change the product name to remove the "Finder" reference.

A Better Finder Rename 8 will continue to be available from our own web site and we will obviously honour forever upgrades and continue to offer discounted major upgrades and bundles. In other words, nothing will change for existing customers nor will new customers be treated any different.

The decision to buy on the Mac App Store or directly from us is a matter of your personal preference. We are happy either way.

Please understand that if you buy from the Mac App Store, you buy into Apple's way of running things and we us developers have very limited influence over how Apple manages the Mac App Store.

Version 8.73

19th January 2011

This release adds two new text moving actions:

  • Move text in front of existing text
  • Move text after existing text

Version 8.72

23rd December 2010

This release fixes the droplet feature which was broken amid Mac App Store changes for version 8.71. Sorry.

Version 8.71

14th December 2010

This release delivers the first installement of new text moving actions.

  • Move text to position
  • Move text to front
  • Move text to end

Version 8.70

10th November 2010

This release makes performance and memory management improvements.

Version 8.69

13th October 2010

This release makes further improvements to the unicode handling.

Version 8.68

30th September 2010

This is a minor update that:

  • allows for larger starting values for sequence numbers
  • updates uninstall instructions for Snow Leopard

Version 8.67

15th September 2010

This release adds new options for inserting space saving alphabetical sequences into file names.

Version 8.66

6th September 2010

This release fixes a bug in the 'Insert Sequence Number At Position' renaming action introduced in the last release.

Version 8.65

25th August 2010

This release adds the abilitity to insert file path components to the front or the back of existing text or at a particular position.

Version 8.64

11th August 2010

This release introduces a new category of renaming actions allowing you to insert path components in a variety of ways.

Version 8.63

21st July 2010

The new release improves the compatibility of the "rename from file list" feature with tab delimited text files exported from Mircosoft Excel.

Version 8.62

14th July 2010

The new release adds new renaming actions to the folder name category:

  • insert folder name at position
  • insert folder name in front of existing text
  • insert folder name at the end of existing text

Version 8.61

23rd June 2010

The new release fixes a rare crashing bug.

Version 8.60

2nd June 2010

The new release provides three additional ways of inserting roman numerals into file names:

  • insert in front of existing text
  • insert to end of existing text
  • insert at position

Version 8.59

10th May 2010

The new release updates the help book with advice on how to best handle very large renaming jobs.

Version 8.58

20th April 2010

The new release allows the automatic loading of EXIF information for image files to be switched off.

This can result in a huge performance boost for all renaming actions that do not require this information, especially when working with large files over a network.

Disabling the feature will, however, lead to incorrect sorting when using the EXIF information.

Our advice would be to leave the option switched on unless you are looking at very large jobs over a network.

Version 8.57

13th April 2010

This new release adds an option to disable the Quick Look thumbnail creation for the confirmation dialog.

While it can be a great help to see a thumbnail of each picture or document that you are about to rename, if you are working with very large file sizes (e.g. digital camera raw files, medical scans, huge PDFs, etc.) or with files on a slow server, the thumbnail creation can become very slow.

As this is not such a common scenario, by default thumbnail creation remains switched off.

For those special jobs, however, where the thumbnail creation process is slowing you down, you can now disable it in the "Preferences..." dialog and you will be presented with the item's icon instead.

Version 8.56

7th April 2010

This release adds support for random sorting in the sequence number, roman numerals and alphabetical sequence renaming actions.

Version 8.55

23rd March 2010

This release fixes a minor bug that would allow the multi-step drawer to be closed but not re-opened under a set of infrequent conditions.

Version 8.54

10th March 2010

The new release allows droplets to be locked so that they cannot be edited by double clicking them. This can be useful for system administrators who need to distribute droplets to end-user and want to avoid them being edited by mistake.

Version 8.53

3rd March 2010

This release adds a new action that removes all diacritical marks (accents, umlauts, etc) from file names.

Version 8.52

24th February 2010

This release further improves the handling of international character sets and fixes a minor bug.

Version 8.51

2nd February 2010

This release adds a new "Replace using regular expressions" action to the "Advanced & Special" category that acts in a way familiar to most software developers and unix geeks.

The action that was formerly known under that name is still available as "Re-arrange using regular expressions" and continues to work as before. You should not have any problems with your existing droplets or presets.

Please note that regular expressions are an advanced feature, that may be completely unsuitable for casual computer users. They are very powerful, but basically also represent a particularly cryptic programming language in their own right and have a big learning curve. The documentation links to external resources for learning about regular expressions.

Version 8.50

29th January 2010

This new release fixes a problem introduced by the additional safety checks in version 8.49 released two days ago.

The problem occured only when you were attempting to change the case of a file name (e.g. convert to uppercase, lowercase, sentence case). In this scenario version 8.49 would refuse to rename the file because a file of the same name already existed (HFS+ is case preserving but not case sensitive).

Version 8.49

27th January 2010

This is a recommended update for all 8.x users. It fixes an extremely rare but potentially serious bug.

Version 8.48

20th January 2010

This is a minor update that removes the current restriction of the step value in the sequence number actions having to be no greater than 255.

Version 8.47

6th January 2010

This new version replaces the old RegExLib regular expression library with its modern RegExLibLite counterpart that uses the ICU library that is built into Leopard and Snow Leopard. This should result in faster regular expressions processing and more elegant international character set handling, as well as cutting down on the application size.

The next version of A Better Finder Rename 8 will deliver further enhancements based on this new library. There are detailed differences between the old and the new libraries, but this should not have much effect on run-of-the-mill regular expressions use. Please consult the "Help" menu for more information.

The new version also makes the accurate but very slow calculation of folder sizes introduced in 8.43 optional and switches it off by default. If you need accurate folder and bundle sizes you can switch this feature on in the preferences. Calculating the size of a folder involves calculating the size of all the files and sub-folders that it contains and can thus be very slow (try Get Info... in the Finder). This speed penality can't be justified if like most people you never use the "sort by file size" feature.

Version 8.46

21st December 2009

The new version fixes a minor bug that could cause the preset description not to be saved correctly.

Version 8.45

9th December 2009

The new version fixes two minor bugs:

  • full posix path file lists are now correctly recognized again
  • a rare bug in the "remove a range of characters" action

Version 8.44

2nd December 2009

The new version adds support for using roman numerals in file names.

You can produce a roman numeral list (e.g. Chapter I, Chapter II, etc.) or insert roman numerals at the beginning or end of the file name.

Version 8.43

30th November 2009

The new version now correctly calculates the size of bundle files.

Version 8.42

24th November 2009

Improves unicode support for better international character set support.

Version 8.41

19th November 2009

This bug fix release is a recommended upgrade for all users of versions 8.39 and 8.40.

Version 8.39 introduced a regression that broke the handling of case sensitive file names.

Version 8.40

18th November 2009

This release makes signifcant improvements to the "rename from file list" feature.

It introduces a new simplified way of specifying current name/ new name pairs in tab delimited text files to complement the existing full path/ new name format. It also features several minor improvements in error reporting, saving file lists, updates the documentation regarding these features, etc.

Version 8.39

16th November 2009

This release addresses a potentially serious bug and is a recommended upgrade for all A Better Finder Rename 8 users.

Version 8.38

11th November 2009

This releases fixes a bug affecting fast typists only.

Version 8.37

9th November 2009

The new release dramatically speeds up the file comments (aka spotlight comments) protection feature introduced in the previous version.

Version 8.36

28th October 2009

The new release is a recommended upgrade for all A Better Finder Rename 8 users with an up-to-date Leopard or Snow Leopard installation.

It prevents file comment comment loss by explictly copying the file comments from the old file to the "new" file. This behaviour can be switchd off in the preferences but is switched on by default.

Apple's file comment (aka Spotlight comment) implementation is notoriously fragile with file comments disappearing for all kinds of reasons, including moving files to non HFS+ volumes, deleting .DS_Store files, moving files outside of the Finder (e.g. via the terminal), saving documents to new locations, archiving and un-archiving files, putting them under version control, etc, etc. For that reason, we strongly advise against using file comments to keep track of important data.

It appears that after taking several years to (recently) fix file comment loss for many standard API calls, Apple have managed to "break" file comments again with recent updates to Leopard and Snow Leopard (worked on 10.6.0). It is thus possible that you will lose file comments if you use previous versions of A Better Finder Rename.

Version 8.35

26th October 2009

This release fixes a cosmetic issue on Snow Leopard and enables Command-W closing of the application.

Earlier today, version 8.34 was posted with a minor display bug. If you have downloaded that version please update it.

Version 8.33

21st October 2009

This release contains significant improvements to the handling of unlock codes and should make unlocking the product significantly less error prone.

Version 8.32

5th October 2009

Fixes a rare problem with composed unicode characters affecting the "rename from file list" feature.

Version 8.31

1st October 2009

The new release allows A Better Finder Rename to be used as part of your ImageCapture workflow on Snow Leopard.

Version 8.30

23rd September 2009

The new release includes a new version of the preferences pane that handles system with a legacy A Better Finder Launcher installation more gracefully.

It also fixes a minor bug where the number of renamed files was reported incorrectly under particular circumstances.

Version 8.29

16th September 2009

Addresses a problem when trying to rename files containing a forward slash on Snow Leopard.

Version 8.28

9th September 2009

Snow Leopard specific changes only:

  • fixes crash when reading a lot of mp3 tags
  • help book updated with instructions on how to get the "A Better Finder Rename 8..." service to appear in the Finder's contextual menu
  • preference pane updated
  • uninstalls pre-Snow Leopard components that are no loner required

Version 8.27

12th August 2009

This release adds an "A Better Finder Rename 8..." menu item to the services menu and allows A Better Finder Rename to be started by selecting files in the Finder or other applications via the "Services" menu.

This also means that the new release is now Snow Leopard compatible.

Version 8.26

29th July 2009

This release contains a number of enhancements:

  • 64-bit mode is re-enabled for PowerPC G5 users; this should provide a big performance boost on PowerPC-based Macs. If you experience any problems, please let me know immediately!
  • conflict resolution performance is optimized for a special case
  • error reporting is improved with a numeric stack trace

Version 8.25

23rd July 2009

This release contains multiple bug fixes for rare multi-threading issues:

  • preview thread could potentially become stuck
  • preview thread could potentially fail

The new release also improves the regular expression matching algorithm to more elegantly deal with unicode composed character sequences (e.g. French accents, umlauts, etc).

Version 8.24

12th July 2009

Fixes a bug affecting 8.23.

Version 8.23

8th July 2009

The new release adds new ways of using MP3/AAC tags to rename rename music files:

  • add tags at the front of the file name
  • add tags to the front of existing text
  • add tags at the end of the file name
  • add tags after existings text
  • add tags at position

Other changes:

  • preference pane now correctly reports A Better Finder Attributes update information
  • fixed a potential crashing bug
  • refined music tags actions on screen layout
  • other minor refinements and fixes

Version 8.22

25th June 2009

This release fixes a display issue with file names that contain forward slashes.

Version 8.21

10th June 2009

This release delivers significant performance improvements and focuses on optimizing the renaming and file name computation.

  • much faster "prepare for renaming" stage
  • much faster preview when using the multi-step rename interface
  • lower memory utilization
  • spelling mistakes corrected
  • improved error reporting

This is the last of our performance and scalability related releases for a while and most users should notice dramatic speed improvements, especially on large renaming jobs.

Version 8.20

28th May 2009

The new version provides easy all-in-one error reporting and fixes compatibility with some G5-based systems.

Version 8.19

27th May 2009

This new version delivers an order of magnitude speed improvement for the conflict resolution feature.

Further improvements:

  • main window now has a close buttion in the title bar
  • file name swapping is now more reliable
  • addresses a rare situation where the renaming engine could potentially have locked
  • the action drawer now draws and resizes correctly despite a Leopard GC bug
  • improved error reporting

Version 8.18

6th May 2009

The new version features an improved renaming engine that is faster, uses less memory and can process larger rename jobs.

It also resolves a crashing issue that affected some Mac OS X configurations under version 8.17.

Version 8.17

24th April 2009

This release fixes problems on older Macs equipped with 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors.

Version 8.16

23rd April 2009

This release cleans up some problems with yesterday's 8.15 release.

The move to 64-bit did not go as well with "The Big Mean Folder Machine" a few months ago and some bugs crept in that this releases fixes.

  • The automatic updates that are downloaded by the application are now digitally signed to added security
  • the Finder contextual menu now works correctly again
  • the main window focuses correctly upon launch

Version 8.15

22nd April 2009

This release takes A Better Finder Rename 8 to a 64-bit garbage collected architecture and prepares the ground for important scalability and performance improvements that we hope to deliver in the next two releases.

A direct link to our brand-new support forums has been added to the "Help" menu and minor updates to the optional contextual menu plugin, hot key and system preferences modules are included.

Note also that our version numbering scheme has changed. Instead of the 8.x.x numbering we now use a 8.x scheme, where the "x" is simply the release number. This gives us more room for more frequent updates now that we have the automatic update feature firmly in place. Sorry if this causes any confusion for long term users; it's new but once you get used to the idea it's a win-win.

Version 8.1.4

1st April 2009

This is the latest stable release and the release you'll get by downloading directly from the website. The new 64-bit version is still plagued by a crashing bug on some systems. We hope to have solved the problem within the next few days.

This release fixes a bug affecting file name conflict resolution resolution.

Version 8.1.3

27th March 2009

This release fixes a bug affecting the conversion to legal Windows NTFS/SMB and Mac OS 9 file names.

Version 8.1.2

18th March 2009

The new version protects iPhoto and iTunes libraries from accidental damage.

You should never directly rename files that are under the control of management application such as iPhoto and iTunes because you risk damaging meta-data held by such applications, such as albums, play lists, etc. You should first export the files you want to rename before changing their names.

A Better Finder Rename 8 now brings up a warning dialog when you attempt to make such a modification.

Version 8.1.1

18th February 2009

This release improves the usability of the "Remove specific characters" and "Replace specific characters" actions to avoid confusion with similar text-based features.

Version 8.1

9th February 2009

This release focuses on performance and memory utilization. The conflict resolution stage is now much faster for large jobs and the performance of all stages of the renaming pipeline has been improved.

Version 8.0.9

27th January 2009

This fixes a problem with the new preview list refresh feature introduced in 8.0.8. The preview is now correctly refreshed when the renaming operation is cancelled.

Version 8.0.8

14th January 2009

This release makes a long requested change to the behavior of the program.

  • the preview list is no longer cleared at the end of a renaming session

This enables you to perform multiple renames one step at a time, but in general you should still prefer using the multi-step renaming feature, because this only resolves file name conflicts once and not multiple times giving you a cleaner result if intermediary steps cause file name conflicts.

The new behavior is switched on by default, so if you prefer the old behavior you need to switch it off in the "Preferences..." dialog box.

Version 8.0.7

22nd December 2008

In a recent Mac OS X update, Apple have corrected a long standing bug that affected the renaming of files containing the forward slash character. This has made the workaround used by A Better Finder Rename to remedy this bug obsolete and prevented it from renaming such files correctly itself. This new release removes the workaround and restores A Better Finder Rename's ability to rename to file names containing forward slashes.

Version 8.0.6

17th December 2008

This release fixes a bug in the preference pane component.

Version 8.0.5

10th December 2008

This new release adds the ability to remove blocks of numbers from existing file names.

Version 8.0.4

25th November 2008

The new release adds new renaming actions to the Date & Time category:

  • Insert date/ time in front of existing text
  • Insert date/ time after existing text
  • Insert date/ time at position

It also contains a number of minor improvements and fixes.

Version 8.0.3

3rd November 2008

The new release provides the option of switching off the automatic file name conflict resolution feature during the preview. When handling large numbers of files this can dramatically speed up the previewing speed of the application since the conflict resolution is the most time-consuming part of the preview computation.

You can switch the conflict resolution on or off in the little "gear" menu under preview table at any moment. By default it is switched off, so you'll need to switch it on explicitly to preview conflict resolution results.

Whatever the preview settings, conflict resolution is always performed before any files are renamed.

In addition, the new version also adds a few new conflict resolution schemes.

Version 8.0.2

27th October 2008

The new version fixes a date sorting bug affecting only dates before the 1st of January 2000.

Version 8.0.1

14th October 2008

This new version adds three new ways of adding image dimensions to the file names.

Version 8.0

17th September 2008

Three years, 48 point releases and 7 betas after version 7 was released in 2005, A Better Finder Rename 8 is finally shipping.

This type of development effort is only made possible by the support of a dedicated team of alpha testers, who ensure that by the time the first public beta is released, the new version has already undergone extensive fault and acceptance testing.

Special Thanks to:

Extra special thanks to John Spannenburg who's managed to keep me up until late at night for the past few weeks :-)

Version 8.0 beta 7

9th September 2008

This is the first release candidate for version 8.0.

  • includes an Apple Help Book to replace online help
  • fixed a problem with droplet settings not being saved correctly
  • fixed a problem where settings were not preserved between runs

Version 8.0 beta 6

27th August 2008

  • faster conflict resolution
  • more accurate progress information
  • some cosmetic changes

Version 8.0 beta 5

19th August 2008

In this release:

  • introduces the new Saveable Presets feature
  • regular expressions action fixed
  • easier to use on smaller displays
  • context menu no longer displays entry for version 7, if this has been removed

Version 8.0 beta 4

11th August 2008

In this release:

  • the automatic conflict resolution feature now behaves correctly
  • the "silent" setting of droplets is now respected
  • the progress information dialog now appears without delay

Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade.

Version 8.0 beta 3

7th August 2008

This release fixes a crashing bug introduced in yesterday's second beta.

Version 8.0 beta 2

6th August 2008

This is the second public beta of A Better Finder Rename 8.

Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade.

This second beta:

  • fixes a rare bug that affects only complex renames
  • correctly shows the hot key component settings in the System Preferences pane, even if no previous version of A Better Finder Rename is installed
  • delivers an approximate speed increase of 30%
  • upgrades the Sparkle software update framework
  • adds a shortcut key for activating the multi-step interface
  • makes a few cosmetic improvements

You can download the new beta release from the download page, or via the automatic update feature ("Check for Update..." in the "A Better Finder Rename 8" menu).

Version 8.0 beta 1

4th August 2008

This is the first public beta of A Better Finder Rename 8.

Version 8 is a major upgrade and free to customers who have purchased the product after the 1st of January 2007 or who own a forever license. Other users will need to purchase an upgrade.

Here are some of the highlights of the new version:

  • New User Interface
    • fully resizable single window with larger preview area
    • renaming actions are now organized into 7 intuitive categories
    • and too many other refinements to list individually
  • New Renaming Engine
    • is now database-backed for larger renames and more advanced features
    • automatically resolves file name conflicts by inserting configurable distinguishers at the end of conflicting file names
    • previews all files that will be renamed (no longer limited to 250 items)
    • fully multi-threaded means that the UI never blocks even when previewing or renaming large renaming jobs
    • optimizes the order in which items are renamed so as to avoid "deadlocks" (i.e. situations where one file can't be renamed because a previous file has not yet been renamed)
    • extensive progress information is provided at each stage (no more beach balling)
  • automatic software updates via Sparkle

The major missing feature from this first beta are save-able presets, a much requested feature that will definitely make it into the final release.

You can download the beta release from the download page.

Version 7.9.9.3

31st July 2008

Like the last minor release this one was prompted by an alpha tester finding a bug in the forthcoming version 8 (beta 1 probably out next week!) that also affects version 7.

The new release fixes a memory leak in the "Add Image Dimensions" rename action.

Version 7.9.9.2

16th July 2008

While development on version 8 is fast approaching the public beta stage, my alpha testers have discovered some bugs that go back to version 7..

  • remove vowels action fixed
  • replace with regular expression fixed
  • context menu, preference pane & hot key components updated in anticipation of version 8

Version 7.9.9.1

7th July 2008

Minor bug fix release: fixes contextual menu problems.

Version 7.9.9

25th June 2008

The new release adds support for UTF-16 ID3 tags in MP3 music files.

Version 7.9.8

21st May 2008

This is a minor update that improves the unlock procedure.

Version 7.9.7.1

2nd April 2008

Improved support for site licensing.

Version 7.9.7

20th February 2008

Adds a new "convert to sentence case" rename action.

Version 7.9.6.1

7th February 2008

Two minor bug fixes:

  • file names can now never include the illegal ":" character
  • droplet mode has been further bullet-proofed

Version 7.9.6

16th January 2008

It is now possible to add files to the preview using the Finder context menu while the programming is running.

Version 7.9.5.6

2nd January 2008

This is a minor bug fix update.

Version 7.9.5.5

19th December 2007

This version uses a more robust way of identifying and correctly ignoring invisible files during renames.

Version 7.9.5.1

10th December 2007

This is a very minor update that simply improves consistency between the program and the on-site screencast.

In the screencast the demonstrated action is called "Produce sequence number list" whereas we renamed this to "Create sequence number list" in the 7.9.5 release. This apparently has caught out a lot of people. Sorry about that. The name is back to the original now.

Version 7.9.5

28th November 2007

  • add image width and height to file name
  • action menu re-organized to make it easier to find the right action
  • hot key now inactive in applications other than the Finder

adds the ability to include an image's dimensions to the file name, re-organizes the action menu and fixes a minor bug.

Version 7.9.4.5

11th November 2007

This is a recommend update for all A Better Finder Rename users on Leopard.

It sets the correct default renaming mode appropriate for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Version 7.9.4

23rd October 2007

Improves the default sorting of the preview window and delivers full Leopard compatibility.

Version 7.9.3.5

18th October 2007

Fixes a bug affecting the "Rename from file list" feature.

Version 7.9.3

26th September 2007

Updates the preview window with an iTunes-like layout, tweaks the user interface for the multi-step rename feature and contains other minor refinements.

Version 7.9.2

29th August 2007

Makes further improvements to the multi-step rename feature:

  • improved user experience
  • improved error handling
  • new "Clear All" button
  • extensive internal changes

Version 7.9.1

8th August 2007

This is a minor bug fix release resolving a launch problem on Mac OS X 10.4.0 only.

Version 7.9

25th July 2007

Introduces a second sorting order for all renaming actions that use ordering.

The second sorting order will be used in situations where the first sorting order assigns the same rank to two or more items. Up to now the order in which items with identical rank appeared in the sort was essentially random.

Such situations are rare in normal operation, but with the advent of sub-second continuous shooting modes on modern SLR and SLR-like digital cameras, digital photos with identical EXIF timestamps are becoming more common.

Setting the first sorting order to "By EXIF digital camera date" and the second sorting order to "By name and sequence number" will allow you to maintain the proper ordering of continuous shooting mode pictures when creating new sequence numbers from the original file names.

Version 7.8.6

16th July 2007

Fixes a crashing bug introduced by a recent QuickTime update that affects only droplets.

Version 7.8.5

26th June 2007

This releases introduces "silent" droplets that are capable of being used in fully automated workflows without human supervision.

More information is available in the manual.

The are also various minor bug fixes and improvements especially in the confirmation dialog.

Version 7.8.1

11th June 2007

The new release fixes a bug affecting the "Add folder name to beginning" and "Add folder name to end" rename actions.

Version 7.8

23rd May 2007

The new version adds a few additional renaming actions to make the interface more easily understandable:

  • Remove specific characters
  • Remove text
  • Remove text from beginning
  • Remove text from end

The new release also updates the preferences pane component to correctly reflect the fact that all users who have purchased version 7 after the 1st of January 2007 will be given free upgrades to version 8 (including minor updates up to, but not including version 9.0)

Version 7.7.7

14th May 2007

This releases fixes two problems:

  • it removes the "ultra-safe, ultra-fast" renaming mode that was broken by a recent Mac OS X update
  • it now correctly encodes file lists as utf8 documents to help international users who require extensive character sets

Version 7.7.6

23rd April 2007

This release adds the "ultra-fast, ultra-safe" renaming mode, which uses the same renaming procedure as the Finder thus optimizing both speed and safety. This is now the default renaming mode.

A minor problem with the conflict resolution dialog is also solved.

Version 7.7.5

18th April 2007

The new release upgrades the mp3/mp4 tag reading code:

  • read m4a files correctly
  • read protected m4p files
  • read bookmark-able m4b files
  • added cd number and number of cds for aac files

and introduces new mp3 renaming options:

  • preferred & fallback patterns
  • handles textual track numbers in mp3 tags, e.g. "Track #4" instead of simply "4"

Version 7.7

14th March 2007

The new release

  • adds intelligent sequence number sorting
  • NFTS/SMB file name conversion now takes care of many exotic problems
  • in order to avoid confusion, you can no longer close the multi step drawer while the remaining action is switched off

Version 7.6.5

7th February 2007

The new release makes substantial improvements to the preview list:

  • adds multiple selection
  • adds drag & drop removal
  • adds a "clear" button
  • adds an explanatory table background

Version 7.6.1

5th February 2007

This bug fix releases resolves a problem affecting the ability to edit droplets.

Version 7.6

10th January 2007

The new version improves support for EXIF digital picture format to include the following:

  • JPEG
  • CRW, CR2, THM (Canon)
  • NEF (Nikon)
  • TIFF (Various Manufacturers)
  • RAF (Fuji)
  • ORF (Olympus)
  • MRW (Minolta)
  • DNG (Adobe Digital Negative)
  • SRF (Sony)

Version 7.5.6

8th December 2006

This new release is a recommend update for all 7.5.5 users. It fixes a startup problem.

Version 7.5.5

6th December 2006

The new version substantially improves the preview window, allowing it to be docked to the top, bottom or the right hand side and assisting with smart resizing and dragging.

The preview drawer is still available but the separate preview window now becomes the default.

The new release also adds new options for the date and time-based renaming actions.

This is the first release that requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later!

Version 7.5.1

1st December 2006

Fixes a minor menu error, where the positions of "Add sequence number to beginning" was accidentally swapped with "Add sequence number to end".

Version 7.5

8th November 2006

  • added the ability to use "alphabetical sequences" as well as sequence numbers for a more compact file name
  • added "Rename" and "Rename & Quit" menu items and shortcuts
  • remove m4p tag reading support forced by Apple imposing new technical restrictions on reading "FairPlay" songs
  • option to only include the files whose name is actually going to be changed when producing file lists
  • option to ignore case when reading in tab-delimited file lists (Improved support for case insensititive file systems)
  • minor UI improvement (tab order in "Replace Text")
  • correct handling of GarageBand bundled file format

Version 7.4.7

14th October 2006

The new version fixes the droplet editing feature that was accidentally broken in version 7.4.5.

Version 7.4.6

30th September 2006

The new version updates the optional program components: the systems preferences pane, hot key and contextual menu plugin.

Version 7.4.5

27th September 2006

  • rename & apply button replaced by option
  • fade out effect can now be switched on or off in the preferences
  • minor bug fix

Version 7.4

30th August 2006

  • adds new date and time formats
  • improves reliability of large drag and drop operations
  • warns of FileVault problems and suggests workaround
  • improves navigation to the product website
  • fixed spelling mistake in file list feature
  • fixed minor usability issues

Version 7.3.5

12th July 2006

Version 7.3.5 makes it easier than ever to use regular expressions to manipulate the file names through its new expression group preview.

Version 7.3

7th June 2006

The new adds version adds an "Apply" button, which performs a rename without closing the application.

You can vote to change the standard behavior of the tool by participating in our online poll.

Version 7.2.5

3rd May 2006

The new release focuses on improving performance on large rename batches of more than a few hundred files.

Other changes:

  • fixes a problem with the tab-delimited flavor of "Rename from file list"
  • smaller binary
  • fixes a problem with case changes and manual conflict resolution

Version 7.2.2

19th April 2006

The new version updates the System Preferences Pane and the Hot Key Component to address a minor installation bug.

Version 7.2.1

22nd March 2006

This release fixes a problem with case changes introduced in version 7.2 and is a recommend update for 7.2 users.

Version 7.2

22nd March 2006

The new version improves the way in which file name conflicts are handled. It already marks potential name conflicts with warning signs inside the preview and offers a conflict resolution dialog during renaming.

Version 7.1.5

15th February 2006

The new version adds improved RAW photo file handling:

  • adds support for Adobe's Digital Negative (DNG) format
  • adds experimental support for Canon's CR2 RAW format under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
  • adds experimental support for Nikon's NEF RAW format under Tiger Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

The new version also adds more date formats and fixes a startup bug.

Version 7.1

18th January 2006

The new release adds the ability to remove files from the preview window and further refines the preview feature. It is also the first Universal binary release of the product, meaning that it will run at native speeds on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintoshes.

Version 7.0.5

14th December 2005

The new version corrects teething problems with the entirely rewritten 7.0 release.

In particular the tool now supports file names that contain forward slashes or composed unicode characters correctly, the hotkey component (if previously installed) is now upgraded automatically, minor UI glitches were fixed, etc.

The new version is a recommend upgrade for 7.0 users.

Version 7

16th November 2005

A Better Finder Rename 7 is the result of a complete 10-month rewrite of the 70,000+ lines of code that made up the version 6.9.5 release.

Version 7 was engineered from ground-up to take advantage of Mac OS X's Cocoa application frameworks to offer a best-of-breed Macintosh user experience.

We have taken the opportunity to improve nearly all aspects of A Better Finder Rename and there are countless small and not-so-small improvements.

Amongst other features, version 7 adds the long-awaited ability to combine a number of different rename action in a single rename.

Version 6.9.5

6th July 2005

The new release updates the hot key and preference pane components to provide an improved user experience:

  • system preference pane now displays all hot keys in a single table
  • user-defined hot key combinations run through a 'sanity check' to avoid problems with other applications
  • hot key component no longer installed by default
  • clean hot key installation and uninstallation from the system preference pane

Version 6.9.4

25th May 2005

This bug fix release correcting a sorting-related problem when you rename more than 1500 files at a time.

Version 6.9.3

13th May 2005

Fixes problems under Mac OS 10.3.

Version 6.9.2

12th May 2005

Fixes an installer bug.

Version 6.9.1

11th May 2005

This a bug fix release fixing the "Change Number" feature that allows you to pad numbers embedded in your file names (image1.gif) with additional zeros (image001.gif) or add and subtract values (image005.gif).

Version 6.9

13th April 2005

Version 6.9 now allows you not only to convert Macintosh files names to legal Windows NTFS file names, but also into account limitations of the SMB Windows file sharing service.

Version 6.8.5

23rd March 2005

The new version provides sentence and title case conversion for MP3 and AAC tags.

Version 6.8

23rd FEBRUARY 2005

A Better Finder Rename 6.8 provides a smart truncating feature which preserves file extensions wherever possible.

Version 6.7.5

26th January 2005

Allows the current date and time to be exploited for renaming files.

Version 6.7

1st December 2004

This update provides more advanced options for renaming MP3/AAC-encoded music files.

More information in the manual.

Version 6.6.6

17th November 2004

This minor update contains the new version of the System Preferences pane shared with the other A Better Finder series tools.

The System Preference Pane update:

  • allows the hot key to be changed to a wider variety of keys
  • displays registration details on all A Better Finder products
  • replaces the old Registration Assistant application
  • unloads the resident A Better Finder hot key application from memory when the feature is switched off

Version 6.6.5

4th NOVEMBER 2004

A Better Finder Rename now handles Apple iTunes AAC-encoded audio files as well as MP3 files.

Version 6.6

13th OCTOBER 2004

A Better Finder Rename can now read MP3 music tags, including:

  • artist
  • song title
  • album
  • track number
  • number of tracks

The new "Rename to MP3 information" action allows you to combine this information in a variety of ways.

The new feature uses Quicktime extensively and this means that the renaming may not be quite as fast as usual. We have provided a first level MP3 Tag cache to speed up interactive previewing.

Version 6.5.5

15th SEPTEMEBR 2004

The EXIF digital photo metadata support based on QuickTime technology introduced in version 6.4.5 proved to be accurate, but also slow. Something that became particularly obvious when dealing with large numbers of files.

This new release thus focuses on EXIF performance improvements:

  1. We have coded our own EXIF implementation which is between 10 and 100 times quicker than the QuickTime mechanism.
  2. We have also created a first level cache for date and EXIF metadata.

This has resulted in dramatically faster preview and rename performance for all EXIF or date-based actions.

Version 6.5

18th AUGUST 2004

The new version improves compatibility with FileVault and some third-party file systems and external or remote devices.

You can now choose between a "safe" mode which preserves file comments under Mac OS X but may not work on some third-party file systems, and the "fast" mode which will work with FileVault and under other non-standard configurations.

Version 6.4.5

14th JULY 2004

This is the second release that focuses on EXIF digital photo metadata. It adds supports for EXIF data in TIFF and Canon Raw (.CRW & .THM) format files; both formats are used by some professional grade digital cameras for loss-less image capture.

Version 6.4

16th JUNE 2004

The new version can use the date and time at which a digital camera picture was taken rather than relying on the picture's file creation date.

This information is extracted from the EXIF metadata embedded in the picture files produced by most leading camera manufacturers.

Version 6.3.5

19th MAY 2004

The new version allows the name of the enclosing folder to be added to the file name.

Version 6.3.1

24th APRIL 2004

This point release fixes a startup bug affecting first-time users. It is a recommended upgrade for all 6.3 users.

Version 6.3

21st APRIL 2004

The new version introduces regular expression substitution. This advanced renaming technique will be familiar to BBEdit users, UNIX veterans and most programmers. It may prove inappropriate for novice computer users.

The A Better Finder Rename implementation covers:

  • PCRE - Perl Compatible Regular Expressions
  • substitution expressions
  • graphical display of expressions groups
  • quick guide to regular expressions usage

The new version also improves the error reporting and handling.