Whenever I end up with a large-ish collection of files I need to rename, I find myself wishing that Apple or Microsoft would build some sort of batch-renaming feature into their operating systems; You know, highlight all the files you want changed, then apply your changes to them all at once without having to do it one at a time.

Since it is the operating system’s job to help you manage files - creating, renaming, sorting, saving, etc. - you’d think a batch renaming feature would be an obvious inclusion, wouldn’t it? Apparently not.

True, it can be done via a command line, such as Windows DOS or Mac OS X’s Terminal, but why be geeky when we don’t need to be. We need something simpler. Enter Renamer4Mac…

Renamer4Mac gives you a graphical interface which lets you easily rename any number of files according to patterns which you can specify, and in many different ways. You can:

• Search and Replace
• Insert or Overwrite text
• Number the files sequentially
• Convert between upper and lower case
• Delete part of a filename.

It shows a preview of what the resulting names will be next to each file in the list, so you can see how your changes will affect the filenames. In addition, you can decide whether the changes will affect the file suffix or just the name itself. Since a file’s suffix determines what type of file it is and which program opens it, it’s good to see they’ve included this important safeguard.

Plus Renamer4Mac can optionally install a contextual-menu plugin, so that you can access its features by right-clicking on a selection of files (I often prefer running it this way).

The best part? The whole package comes to you as freeware, though donations are requested. You can download it from the developer’s website.