Bulk Renamer & Organizer

Tame your Obsidian vault. One modal. Zero broken links.

Smart, safe, and ridiculously powerful filename normalization for Obsidian. Preview every change before it happens, catch collisions before they bite you, and undo with one click — because we all make mistakes at 2 AM.

Install from Community Plugins · Manual Install · Configuration

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✨ What Makes This Different

Most rename tools go in blind. This one doesn't.

Feature	What It Does
🛡️ Preview everything	See every single change in a color-coded table before touching a file
💥 Collision detection	Catches when two files would normalize to the same name — and blocks execution
↩️ One-click undo	Messed up? Undo the entire batch. Rollback persists across vault reloads
🔍 Regex find & replace	Advanced batch renaming with capture groups, live preview, and all the same safety nets
📅 Smart date prefixes	Automatically organizes files by date — trailing dates move to front, no-date files get their creation time
🍎 macOS case safety	Case-only renames go through a two-step dance so APFS doesn't eat your files
🔗 Link-safe	Uses fileManager.renameFile() — every wikilink, markdown link, and canvas reference stays intact
⏱️ Rate limited	Built-in throttling prevents Obsidian's indexer from choking on bulk operations

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🎬 Before / After

Before	After	What Happened
Angry Ötter & Friends.md	2026-04-06-angry-otter-friends.md	Lowercase, accents stripped, date added
Infinite Coffee Meeting_2025-10-27.md	2025-10-27-infinite-coffee-meeting.md	Trailing date moved to prefix
TODO_World_Domination.md	2026-04-06-todo-world-domination.md	Underscores → dashes, date added
my.super.secret.plan.md	2026-04-06-my-super-secret-plan.md	Dots → dashes, date added
2025-08-14-Operation Pengüin.md	2025-08-14-operation-penguin.md	Lowercase, accents removed

Files with trailing dates use that date as prefix. Files without any date use their creation time.

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Open the command palette (Cmd/Ctrl+P)
2. Search for Bulk rename: Open preview
3. Review the table — green means safe to rename
4. Hit Execute → confirm → watch it go
5. Need to undo? Cmd/Ctrl+P → Bulk rename: Undo last rename

That's it. Your vault is now organized.

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📦 Installation

Community Plugins (Recommended)

1. Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for "Bulk Renamer & Organizer"
3. Install → Enable

Manual Installation

1. Grab main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Drop them into <Vault>/.obsidian/plugins/bulk-renamer/
3. Reload Obsidian and enable in Settings → Community plugins

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🔧 Configuration

Everything lives in Settings → Community plugins → Bulk Renamer & Organizer.

Normalization Pipeline

Each step is independently toggleable. They always run in this order:

Setting	Default	What It Does
Lowercase	✅	README.md → readme.md
Strip Accents	✅	café.md → cafe.md
Spaces to Dashes	✅	my note.md → my-note.md
Dots to Dashes	✅	red.es.md → red-es.md
Strip Special Chars	✅	Keeps only a-z, 0-9, -
Collapse Dashes	✅	a---b.md → a-b.md

Date Prefix

Mode	Behavior
Trailing or CTime (default)	Trailing date → prefix. No date → creation time
Trailing Only	Only adds prefix if a trailing date exists
None	Never adds a date prefix

Timestamp Format

Format	Example	When to Use
YYYY-MM-DD (default)	2025-01-15	Clean, readable, ISO 8601
YYYYMMDD	20250115	Compact sorting
YYMMDD	250115	Short and sweet
YYYYMMDD-HHMM	20250115-1430	Needs hour precision
YYMMDD-HHMMSS	250115-143022	Full timestamp

Regex Find & Replace

The Find and replace tab gives you full regex power with live preview:

Pattern	Replacement	Effect
^my-	our-	my-note.md → our-note.md
(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})	$1$2$3	2025-01-15-note.md → 20250115-note.md
_	- (with g flag)	All underscores → dashes

Supports capture groups ($1, $2), global (g), and case-insensitive (i) flags. Same safety features apply: collision detection, undo, rate limiting, confirmation dialog.

Exclusions

What	Default	Why
Directories	.obsidian/, attachments/	Config & binary files
File patterns	AGENTS.md	AI context files
Templates dir	templates/	Normalized but no date prefix

All three are fully configurable.

Advanced

Setting	Default	What It Does
Rate Limit Delay	100ms	Pause between batches
Rate Limit Batch	10	Files per batch before pausing

Crank these up if your vault is huge. Leave them alone if it isn't.

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🆚 How It Compares

Here's how Bulk Renamer & Organizer stacks up against other popular rename plugins in the Obsidian community:

Feature	Bulk Renamer & Organizer	Bulk Rename	Vault File Renamer	Smart Rename
Preview before rename	✅ Table with reasons	❌	❌	❌
Collision detection	✅ Blocks execution	❌	❌	❌
Undo / Rollback	✅ One-click, persistent	❌	❌	❌
Regex find & replace	✅ With live preview	✅ Text-based	❌	❌
Smart date handling	✅ Trailing + ctime	❌	❌	❌
Configurable pipeline	✅ 6 toggles + 5 date formats	❌	❌	❌
macOS case safety	✅ Two-step rename	❌	❌	❌
Rate limiting	✅ Configurable	❌	❌	❌
Template dir awareness	✅ No date prefix	❌	❌	❌
Zero external deps	✅ Pure TypeScript	❌ Uses xregexp	✅	✅

Each plugin serves a different purpose. Smart Rename excels at single-note renames with link preservation. Vault File Renamer focuses on GitHub-style standardization. Bulk Rename offers regex-based renaming. This plugin combines all of those approaches with safety features on top.

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🛡️ Safety Features

• Dry-run preview — every change shown before execution
• Collision detection — blocks if files would normalize to the same name
• Rollback/undo — one-click restore, persists across reloads
• Rate limiting — prevents Obsidian's indexer from choking
• macOS case safety — two-step rename via .bulk-rename-tmp
• Confirmation dialog — explicit approval before any file is touched
• Error resilience — one failure doesn't stop the whole batch

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📋 What Gets Renamed

Included	Excluded
All .md files in subdirectories	Root-level files
Files in templates/ (no date prefix)	.obsidian/ directory
	attachments/ directory
	AGENTS.md anywhere
	Non-.md files

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⚠️ Known Limitations

• Directory names are not renamed — only filenames
• Canvas display labels may need a vault reload to update (Obsidian limitation), but underlying links are always correct

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🤝 Contributing

We'd love your help! Check out CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions, architecture overview, testing guidelines, and how to submit a PR.

Quick start for devs:

npm install
npm run dev          # watch mode
npm run build        # production build
npm test             # 190 tests
npm run lint         # eslint (obsidianmd rules)

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📄 License

GNU GPLv3

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🙏 Credits

Built from the ground up, inspired by the need for a safer, more predictable bulk rename experience in Obsidian.