Smart Rename

Rename a note in Obsidian and every link to it is rewritten — including the words your reader sees. A sentence that read "as covered in [[Project brief]]" silently becomes "as covered in [[2026 Q3 plan]]", and prose you wrote carefully now says something you did not write.

This plugin renames the note and keeps the old title as the link's display text, so [[Old title]] becomes [[New title|Old title]] and your sentences still read the way you wrote them. The old title is also kept as an alias, so anything still looking for it finds it.

More screenshots

Demo vault

The documentation is a demo vault. Every feature has a note that explains what it does and why you would want it, with a note ready to rename and backlinks ready to watch.

Start reading here — it is plain markdown, so it works on GitHub with nothing installed.

A copy of the vault ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Smart Rename: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading smart-rename-demo-vault.zip from the Releases. It unzips into a single smart-rename-demo-vault-<version> folder.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

What it does

• Backlinks keep their old display text. [[Old title]] becomes [[New title|Old title]], and a link that already had display text you chose is left alone — a plain rename was always right for those. Every link form, before and after, is worked through in the vault. 01 Smart rename
• The old title becomes an alias, so searches and links using it still resolve — unless you untick it for that one rename. 01 Smart rename
• Every step is a checkbox in the rename prompt, pre-ticked from your settings, so a single rename can skip the alias, the header or the link rewrites without a trip to Settings. 01 Smart rename
• Invalid characters are handled, rather than the rename being refused, when the title you want cannot be a file name. 02 Invalid characters
• A linked note can be renamed from where you link to it. Put the cursor on a link, run the command, and the note that link points at is smart-renamed — you never open it. Works on wikilinks, markdown links, embeds and frontmatter links alike. 03 Rename the link target
• The first header and a frontmatter title key can be kept in sync with the new name. 04 Settings

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin are hidden.

To show them, run the following command in the DevTools Console:

window.DEBUG.enable('smart-rename');

For more details, refer to the documentation.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in the CHANGELOG.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING to get set up.

Support

My other Obsidian resources

See my other Obsidian resources.

License

© Michael Naumov