The Settings Window

Choose Better Rename › Settings… (or press Command-,) to open the Settings window. It has three tabs: Services Menu Item, General and Conflict Resolution.

Settings apply to the application as a whole. They are not stored in presets, which only hold action settings.

General

• Show confirmation dialog before renaming shows the confirmation dialog when you click Perform Renames. Untick it to rename immediately
• Show summary after renaming is complete reports how many files were renamed and lists any problems once the rename has finished
• Automatically quit after renaming quits the application once the rename is complete. This is convenient when you mostly launch it from the Finder context menu
• Disable Presets popup on launch stops the presets popup from appearing when you drop files onto the application icon or use the context menu, so the main window opens directly instead
• Should prevent accidental iTunes Library damage and Should prevent accidental iPhoto Library damage warn you before renaming files that appear to live inside an iTunes or iPhoto library. Those applications, like the Music and Photos apps that replaced them, keep track of their files by name and location, so renaming the files behind their back breaks the library. Export the files, rename them and import them again instead
• Generate Quick Look thumbnails for confirmation dialog shows a preview of the selected file in the confirmation dialog. Untick it when you work with very large files, where generating the thumbnail takes a long time
• Allow files on read-only volumes lets you add files from read-only volumes, such as optical discs, locked disk images or read-only network shares. By default such files are refused, because they cannot be renamed. Tick the option to preview renames or to save a file list for them
• Perform slow but accurate folder size calculation adds up the contents of folders when sorting by size, instead of using the size the file system reports for the folder itself. It makes adding large folder trees slower
• Retrieve EXIF and shooting date sorting information reads the shooting date from image files as they are added, so that the By EXIF digital camera date sort order works. Untick it to add files much faster when you do not need that sort order, in particular for files on slow or networked drives
• Log debug information to console writes diagnostic messages to the Console application. Only switch it on when support asks you to
• Clear preview list after renaming empties the preview list once the rename is complete. Untick it to keep the renamed files in the list under their new names, so that you can apply further actions to them

The first popup menu below the checkboxes selects the rename mechanism. Leave it on Standard unless renames fail on a particular volume.

The second popup menu selects where the preview data is kept. Use SQLite on disk database is the default and copes with very large renaming jobs. Use in memory database keeps everything in memory and is only useful for troubleshooting.

Services Menu Item

This tab helps you set up the Better Rename… item in the Finder context menu. Show Instructions opens Activating the service and Force Services Menu Update asks macOS to rebuild its list of services when the item does not appear.

Conflict Resolution

When a rename would give two files in the same folder the same name, Better Rename makes the names unique by adding a number, see automatic file name conflict resolution.

• Make a unique file name by adding: chooses the numbering scheme, e.g. 01, 02, 03, 04, … or (a), (b), (c), …
• Use original unchanged file name for the first file leaves the first file of each group without a number
• Sort first:, Then: and Finally: decide which of the conflicting files comes first, and thus which one receives the first number or keeps its original name. The default puts the oldest photo first

See configuring file name conflict resolution for the step by step instructions.