The Interface

Click this drop-down menu to see the various choices related to what to rename and how deep to look, and sorting files and folders, as seen in the screenshot at right.

The Rename section controls what will be seen when you drag files or folders into Name Mangler's window, and hence, which items will be affected by your renaming configuration. By default, Name Mangler does not have folder renaming enabled—you'll need to check the box next to Folders to enable that feature.

Hold the Option key, and the selected entry will become active while disabling the others.

The Depth section controls whether or not you want Name Mangler to look for files inside folders that are within the folder that holds your files.

The Sort By section controls the sort order of the displayed items, and is relatively self-explanatory. There is one special mode, Shuffle, that requires some explanation.

Shuffle mode allows you to rename files randomly; simply set the order to Shuffle prior to renaming, and your existing files will be sorted randomly, then renamed based on your naming configuration.

If you click on Files—thereby deselecting it—you will see a warning dialog…

You should only unmark the Files item if you're trying to only rename folders.

Name Mangler will try to help you out if you've disabled file renaming (and aren't renaming any folders). Instead of an empty file list area, you'll see a big message that says "Not Listed: nn Items," where nn is the number of files that Name Mangler isn't listing.

Name Mangler keeps track of renaming that you have performed; you access these saved tasks (which Name Mangler calls configurations) via the History menu, or by clicking the History button, located at the top left of the below image.

This will reveal a history browser, which makes it simple to reuse previously-used renaming configurations:

The + Add Step button is used to create multi-step renaming confirmations. See Multi-Step Renaming for details on how to build and use these configurations.

File information is presented here, including current and new filenames, as well as state of the renaming operation. You can also see interim results from multi-step renaming, and much more. See the File List Area section of help for more details on this area.

This pop-up menu selects the type of renaming operation you'd like to perform: Find and Replace, Add Prefix, Add Suffix, etc. For full details on each operation, see Renaming Actions.

Each renaming operation's details appear in this area. You can see what's available with each operation in the section on Renaming Actions.

Click this button to start your rename operation. If Name Mangler is scanning a huge number of files, clicking this button will stop the scan. Finally, in some situations, it can also be used to revert the last-performed renaming operation. (See Menus for more on reverting operations.)