Step 1 — How to bulk rename files in Google Drive: selecting files or folders
Click Choose from Drive. This opens Google's own file picker — the same one Gmail and Docs use.
- Click individual files, or hold Ctrl and click several.
- Click a whole "My Drive" folder instead — the app automatically grabs every file inside, including subfolders, no extra clicks.
Step 2 — Building a rename pattern
Every rule you turn on applies to every selected file, in this fixed order:
- Find & replace
- Case transform
- Insert file metadata
- Prefix / suffix
- Insert today's date
- Sequential numbering
The file extension is never touched — it's set aside before all of this and reattached at the very end.
Using the same combination regularly? Click Save as… to store it as a named preset. Load brings every field back exactly as saved.
What each rule's box actually asks for
Checking a rule's box reveals its own fields. Here's what's in each one and what to put there.
1. Find & replace — check its box first; the fields below it do nothing until it's on. Two text fields appear: Find text or regex and Replace with. Type IMG in Find and Vacation in Replace with, and IMG_0001.jpg becomes Vacation_0001.jpg. Leave "Replace with" completely empty and whatever's found gets deleted instead of swapped — Find _draft with an empty Replace with turns Report_draft.docx into Report.docx.
Two more checkboxes sit underneath Find & replace.
Use regex — leave this off normally. With it off, Find only matches the exact text you type, nothing more, nothing less. Turn it on only when you want to match numbers that change from file to file, instead of one fixed word. Example: you have IMG_0001.jpg, IMG_0002.jpg, and IMG_0555.jpg — different numbers in each one. Turn on Use regex, type \d+ in Find (this means "any number, of any length") and type NUM in Replace with. All three files get their number swapped for the word "NUM" in one go: IMG_NUM.jpg for every single one, even though each file had a different number to start with. A normal Find (regex off) can't do this — it can only look for one exact number you typed, not "any number."
Case sensitive — leave this off normally too. Off means capital letters and small letters count as the same thing. So typing Report in Find will also catch report and REPORT — all three get changed. Turn it on and now capital/small letters matter: typing Report in Find will only catch files with that exact spelling, capital R and everything. report.docx (small r) would be left alone.
2. Case transform — this one has no checkbox. It's just a dropdown, and whatever option is picked runs automatically — leave it set to "No change" if you don't want it to do anything. No change leaves the name exactly as it is. UPPERCASE turns quarterly report notes.txt into QUARTERLY REPORT NOTES.txt. lowercase turns INVOICE.pdf into invoice.pdf. Title Case capitalizes the first letter of every word: quarterly report notes.txt becomes Quarterly Report Notes.txt. Sentence case capitalizes only the very first letter of the whole name and makes the rest lowercase: QUARTERLY REPORT NOTES.txt becomes Quarterly report notes.txt. None of these ever change the file type at the end (like .txt or .PDF) — that part is always left exactly as it was.
3. Insert file metadata — check its box first; two dropdowns appear once it's on. The first dropdown picks which real piece of info to pull straight from the file itself: Date created, Date modified, File size, or — for photo files specifically — camera details stored inside the photo, like camera model, the date it was actually taken, and its pixel dimensions. The second dropdown is just placement: at the start or end of the filename. Example: pick Date created + At start on a file called vacation.jpg that was created on Drive on August 3, 2026, and it becomes 2026-08-03_vacation.jpg. Example with a photo's own info instead: pick Date taken + At end on sunset.jpg and it becomes sunset_2026-06-14.jpg — using the date the photo was actually shot, which can be a completely different date than when the file was uploaded to Drive.
4. Prefix / Suffix — these two are plain text fields with no checkbox at all; typing anything into either one turns it on automatically, and leaving one blank simply skips it. Type 2026_ into Prefix on notes.txt and it becomes 2026_notes.txt. Type _v1 into Suffix on the same file instead and it becomes notes_v1.txt. Fill in both at once — Prefix 2026_ and Suffix _v1 — and notes.txt becomes 2026_notes_v1.txt, prefix at the front, suffix at the back, same file, one pass.
5. Insert today's date — check its box first; a single position dropdown (start or end) appears once it's on. There's no field to type an actual date into — it always uses today's real date automatically, in the fixed format yyyy-MM-dd. On August 13, 2026, choosing At start turns meeting.txt into 2026-08-13_meeting.txt; choosing At end instead turns it into meeting_2026-08-13.txt.
6. Add sequential number — check its box first; three fields appear once it's on. Start at is the number the very first file in the batch gets — enter 1 and files count up 1, 2, 3... in whatever order they're listed. Zero padding is the confusing one, so here's plainly what it does: it adds extra zeros in front of small numbers so they're all the same length. Set it to 3 and the number 1 becomes 001, the number 2 becomes 002, and so on — always 3 digits total. Leave it blank (or set to 1) and numbers stay plain: 1, 2, 3, no extra zeros added. The last dropdown is position: start or end. Example: three files all named photo.jpg, Start at 1, Zero padding 3, position At start — they become 001_photo.jpg, 002_photo.jpg, 003_photo.jpg. Change Start at to 100 with the same padding and they become 100_photo.jpg, 101_photo.jpg, 102_photo.jpg instead.
Step 3 — Preview & apply
Click Preview changes first — always. It shows every file's current name next to what it would become, without changing anything yet.
- Blue text — this file's name will actually change
- Gray text — nothing to do, not an error
- Red text — couldn't be read or renamed
Once it looks right, click Apply rename — the only step that actually renames files in your Drive.
History & undo
Every applied batch shows up under History with the time, file count, and a couple of example old → new names so you can recognize which run it was. Click Undo on any entry to instantly revert every file in that batch. The last 20 batches are kept; older ones drop off automatically.
Free plan vs. paid
Free accounts can rename up to 50 files per run — shown up front before you build a job, never a surprise mid-task. Paid accounts have no limit. After paying, click I paid — sync now to unlock immediately.
Real-world test at 1,000+ files
To see how the app behaves at scale, 1,008 demo files were run through the entire flow — select, build a 3-rule pattern, preview, apply, undo — in one sitting.
| Step | What happens | Time (1,008 files) |
|---|---|---|
| Selecting the whole folder | Server fetches the full file list from Drive | ~3–4 min |
| Preview changes | Fetches each file's current name individually | ~5 min |
| Apply rename | Re-checks names, then renames each file individually | ~5–6 min |
| Undo | Renames each file back individually | ~5–6 min |
Result: it worked. All 1,008 files were renamed exactly as previewed, and undo correctly restored every single one — nothing lost, nothing left half-renamed.
It handles four-figure batches smoothly. Behind the scenes, any selection is automatically processed in chunks of 250 files at a time — you don't need to split a large folder into smaller selections yourself. For a genuinely huge batch (thousands of files), just expect several minutes per step and keep the tab open while it works.