How to Rename Multiple Filenames on Windows

by Rian

One of the GUI features available on macOS side is its automation. I often contribute Mac’s near-obsessive focus on user automation has to do with the early days of PC experience, experimenting with BASIC for the first time on a computer. That being said, on Mac, if you select multiple items to “rename”, Finder gives you a list of options as to how you would like to rename them: replace, add (or remove), or format. Unsurprisingly, Windows simply does not have the GUI equivalent renaming tool.

Fortunately, there is a command ren to do something similar, albeit on Command Prompt.

1. On Command Prompt, cd into the directory in question. *
2. Run ren [sources] [targets], with wildcards (* or ?). Here are some examples:
   
   • ren * *.txt will append .txt file extension to all.
   • ren *.txt *.text will replace .txt to .text.

* It is possible to feed parent path as a source argument, I opted not to do so in this example to avoid any confusions.

I’m not entirely sure why Windows did not include a GUI equivalent of ren. As of now, if I choose to rename multiple files on File Explorer, it does something quite unimaginable: changing all filenames to [some name] (N). I can’t think of much applications where this is necessary, let alone useful. It would have been better to simply block off the attempt to rename the files in batch if Windows does not natively support one.