Batch Rename Files on a Mac: Rename Multiple Files at Once

Applies to macOS Ventura through macOS 27

The short answer: to batch rename files on a Mac, select them in the Finder, right-click, choose Rename… and pick Replace Text, Add Text or Format. That built-in bulk rename covers most simple jobs. For photo dates and other metadata, regular expressions, control over how numbers are padded, or several changes in one pass, you need the Terminal or a dedicated renaming utility.

A disclosure before we start: I’m the developer of A Better Finder Rename, a batch file renamer for Mac, a paid utility I’ve been working on since 1996, so you’d be right to expect this guide to end by recommending it. Thirty years of helping people rename files is also why the first section tells you when you don’t need it.

1. Bulk rename files in the Finder (free, already installed)

Since OS X Yosemite the Finder has had a serviceable batch renamer that most Mac users have never noticed. (For a single file, or the Finder’s rename keyboard shortcut, see how to rename files in the Finder; this section is about batches.)

1. Select the files in the Finder (⌘A for all, or shift-click a range).
2. Right-click the selection and choose Rename… (on older systems: “Rename X Items…”).
3. Pick one of three modes in the top dropdown:
   • Replace Text finds a string in every name and replaces it: IMG_ becomes Hawaii_ across 400 photos.
   • Add Text adds a fixed prefix or suffix to every name.
   • Format rebuilds each name as Name and Index, Name and Counter or Name and Date, from a custom base name and a starting number.
4. Press Rename and the whole batch is done at once. ⌘Z undoes the entire batch, as long as you do it immediately.

Format mode in macOS 26 and 27. Note Example: Photo00001.jpg: the counter is now zero-padded to five digits, where older systems would have produced Photo1.jpg.

What it’s good for: quick, single-step renames of any size. If your job is “replace this text” or “call them all Invoice 1, Invoice 2, …”, stop reading here. The Finder does this fine, and it’s free.

Where it runs out of road:

• Padding you can’t control. Ventura through Sequoia count 1, 2, 3 … 10, 11, so alphabetical sorting puts file10 before file2. macOS 26 and 27 zero-pad Name and Counter to five digits (Photo00001.jpg), but five is all you get, so exactly 001, 002, 003 is still impossible.
• One step at a time. You can’t replace text and add a prefix and number the files in one pass; you run the dialog repeatedly and hope you don’t slip in the middle.
• No metadata. “The date” is today’s date or the file-system date. The Finder knows nothing about EXIF capture dates, ID3 music tags or page counts.
• No patterns and no preview. No wildcards, no regular expressions, and the numbering follows the current sort order, which you can’t check before you press Rename.

2. Shortcuts and Automator (free, for the rename you repeat every week)

In Shortcuts, or in the older Automator where the action is called Rename Finder Items, you chain a few renaming steps (make lowercase, add date, sequence) and save them as a Quick Action in the Finder’s right-click menu. That is the right tool when you do the same simple rename repeatedly: build it once, run it forever. It’s the wrong tool for one-off complex jobs: there is no proper preview, and the moment you need metadata or regular expressions you’re back where you started. In my experience the practical ceiling is two or three chained steps.

3. The Terminal (free, unlimited power, no safety net)

The plain mv old new command renames one file. For batches, zsh, the default shell since Catalina, ships with zmv, a pattern-based mover:

autoload -U zmv
# change every .jpeg extension to .jpg
zmv '(*).jpeg' '$1.jpg'
# zero-padded numbering, sorted by name
i=1; for f in *.jpg(n); do mv "$f" "$(printf 'hawaii_%03d.jpg' $i)"; ((i++)); done

For renaming photos by their EXIF capture date, the command-line gold standard is the free ExifTool:

exiftool -d "%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e" "-FileName<DateTimeOriginal" /path/to/photos

The honest assessment: the Terminal can do everything a paid utility can, except show you a preview. A typo in a pattern renames a thousand files wrongly in half a second, there is no undo, and the failure modes (name collisions silently overwriting files, hidden extensions, files sorted differently than you assumed) are the ones you discover afterwards. Test on a copied folder first, every time. For developers and photographers with a scripted, repeatable pipeline, this is the best answer on the page.

4. Dedicated renaming utilities (paid, built for exactly this)

A dedicated renamer closes the gap between “the Finder is too simple” and “the Terminal is too unforgiving.” The defining features are a live preview of every name before anything is touched, multi-step renames in one pass, and access to file metadata.

My own entry is A Better Finder Rename, currently at version 12, US$29.95 / €29.95 as a one-time purchase (no subscription; minor updates are free, major upgrades are discounted), with a free trial so you can check it handles your job before paying. The things people actually buy it for are:

• Live preview of every change, with conflict detection, before you commit.
• Multi-step actions: replace text, strip characters, add an EXIF date prefix, then a zero-padded sequence number, as one saved, repeatable action applied in a single pass.
• Metadata renaming: EXIF capture dates including RAW formats, RAW+JPEG+XMP sidecar file pairs kept in sync, ID3 tags for music, Broadcast Wave production audio by Scene and Take, dates in any format you can describe.
• Real regular expressions for the jobs nothing else can express (rename files with regex on a Mac has a cookbook of patterns).
• Scale: routinely used on tens and hundreds of thousands of files at once.

A multi-step action on the left, with a live preview of every resulting name on the right, before a single file is touched.

Fairness requires naming the alternatives: Name Mangler and Renamer are solid Mac renamers in the same price class with friendlier learning curves and shorter feature lists; NameChanger and Transnomino are free and handle the middle ground well; ExifRenamer (free) covers the photos-by-date case. If your needs are modest, try the free ones first. A Better Finder Rename is what you graduate to when none of them can express the rename you need, or when you need to trust a preview before touching fifty thousand client files. For a side-by-side of price, preview and metadata support, see the best Mac file renamer, compared.

(A Better Finder Rename is also on the Mac App Store under the name “Better Rename”, where Apple’s rules make it subscription-based. The version sold on this site is the classic one-time purchase.)

Which tool for which job

Three mistakes to avoid, whatever tool you use

• Sort order determines numbering. Decide whether “file 001” means first alphabetically, first created or first photographed. These differ more often than you’d think.
• Name collisions. Any rename that makes names less unique can produce duplicates, and a pattern that catches the hidden .jpg extension breaks file associations. The Finder and good utilities stop and warn; shell commands may silently overwrite.
• Pilot batch first. Run the rename on 20 copied files, inspect the result, then do the real thing.

Specialized renaming workflows

This guide covers the general case. Some jobs deserve a deeper treatment of their own:

• Rename photos on a Mac: Finder filenames, Apple Photos titles and exports, untangled before you rename anything.
• Rename photos by date taken: filenames from EXIF capture times, including RAW files, sidecars and time zones.
• Rename photos with sequence numbers: numbering order and padding so files sort correctly everywhere.
• Rename files from a spreadsheet or CSV: old names mapped to new names prepared in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
• Rename files with regular expressions: what the Finder, Shortcuts and the Terminal can do with regex, plus a cookbook of patterns.
• Fix photo sorting in the Mac Finder: when the real problem is the order the Finder shows them in, not the names.
• Change a file’s Created or Modified date on a Mac: when the dates themselves are wrong, fix those instead of working around them in the filename.

FAQ

How do I rename multiple files at once on a Mac? Select them in the Finder, right-click, choose Rename…, then Replace Text, Add Text or Format, and press Rename. That is the built-in way to batch change file names on a Mac and it covers most one-change jobs. For anything the three Finder modes can’t express (a fixed number of digits, dates from metadata, several changes in one pass), a dedicated renamer does it with a preview.

Is there a Bulk Rename Utility for Mac? No. Bulk Rename Utility is Windows-only and has no Mac version. The Mac equivalents are the Finder’s Rename… for the basics, NameChanger or Transnomino (free) for the middle ground, and A Better Finder Rename for the full feature set with a live preview.

Can the Finder add leading zeros (001, 002, …)? On macOS 26 and 27, within limits: Name and Counter pads to five digits automatically (Photo00001.jpg), so names sort correctly, but you can’t choose the width. On Ventura through Sequoia the Finder doesn’t pad at all. For a specific number of digits, reach for a dedicated tool.

How do I undo a batch rename? In the Finder: ⌘Z immediately afterwards undoes the whole batch. In A Better Finder Rename, any rename can be undone from within the app. In the Terminal there is no undo, so work on copies.

Can I rename photos using the date they were taken? Not with built-in tools; the Finder only knows file-system dates. Use ExifTool (free, command line), ExifRenamer (free, basic) or A Better Finder Rename (paid, with preview, RAW and sidecar-pair support).

How do I mass rename files on a Mac to lowercase, or fix .JPEG vs .jpg? The Finder’s Replace Text fixes one variant at a time; a pattern-based tool does them all in one pass. In zsh: zmv '(*).(#i)jpeg' '$1.jpg'.

Frank Reiff is the developer of A Better Finder Rename, the Mac batch renaming utility in continuous development since 1996. Questions about a renaming job the article doesn’t cover? Get in touch; unusual renaming problems have a way of becoming product features.