Show HN: F2 – Cross-Platform CLI Batch Renaming Tool

Very interesting, I’ll definitely give it a try!

Another approach I recently discovered is an old but beautiful Unix-style tool for renaming files: vidir - edit a directory in your text editor. It’s part of the moreutils suite [1].

You get the list of filenames in your editor – edit them as you like, save, exit, and it renames the files. It uses whatever editor is set in your $EDITOR env var, so it doesn’t have to be vi/vim.

You can also pipe in a list of files, e.g. `find . -type f | vidir -`, to edit just the files you want - and you can even change paths (add, rename, remove directories) in the editor to move files around easily.

To try it quickly on macOS: `brew install moreutils`

[1] https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/

Awesome tool, thanks for sharing. One feature I would love to see on renaming tools is the following:

  -A - Sample of the of the ACTUAL file name
  -B - Sample of the desired filename

e.g.

  f2 -A 001.pdf -B 001_renamed.pdf

and this would automatically determine that every file with this "pattern" (001) should get the renamed prefix, so:

  001.pdf => 001_renamed.pdf
  002.pdf => 002_renamed.pdf
  ...

Sounds weird, but there once was a tool written in dotnet that used machine learning techniques to achieve exactly this and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately I lost the reference and never found it again.

Most important: Worked locally and did not send the filenames to chatGPT ;)

Incredible name choice here - it's very rare that I get this feeling associating a new project with its name. I'm filled with feelings that touch on nostalgia, utility, UX design history and computing heritage when I hear the name F2 associated with a batch renaming tool. Great job!

Dry-run by default! Use of metadata like EXIF! Undo!

Here's some great product and UX chops, not just coding chops.

I really like your CLI design here, clearly extremely well thought out, lots of great taste on display here: https://f2.freshman.tech/guide/tutorial

The EXIF stuff to create folders based on the date photos were taken is fantastic! https://f2.freshman.tech/guide/organizing-image-library

This tool solves a problem that I face all the time, I am definitely going to be using this often.

For photos, I'm guessing you can use Exiftool's built in geolocation feature to add the city and country first.

https://exiftool.org/geolocation.html

Wow, this goes instantly to my toolbox. Thanks for writing this and sharing it!

It only happens a few times a year that I need to batch rename. Buy when I do my adrenaline levels go up by about two espressos.

The undo functionality is a nice touch. I know cuz I write scripts to rename files and made mistakes before.

In windows I use PowerToys - power rename to rename files. But I'm not a power user I rarely need renaming something.

Wow, it can integrate with exiftool. I use exiftool to rename photo files, but I think f2 offers more flexible renaming features.

Really nice, wow.

Honestly I don't see myself remembering and using the variables features(which gives the exiftool feature others here are raving about) but it's already insanely good without that. Love the ability to refine your selection with further -f flags. Also the ability to rename while create nested paths is so good.

Suggestion, having an "up"[1] mode where you can see the dry run output in a live updating thing when you are adding further -fs and -rs.

[1] https://github.com/akavel/up