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Rename All Files

Rename All Files

Rename (Clean) Filenames is a directory based feature that allows you to clean all filenames in a directory and any sub-directories. It is accessed via the icon to the right of the directory name in the File Manager.

Currently this function does 5 things to all files in a directory and any sub-directories.

  1. Removes everything in parentheses with the exception of the 4-digit year (if available)
  2. Removes c2c
  3. Removes anything in brackets [any text removed] - along with the brackets
  4. Removes any text / characters after "filename issue (year)"
  5. Removes any extra spaces before the file extension

The default pattern used for renaming is {Series Name} {Issue Number} ({Year})

You can define custom naming patterns in File Settings.

Issue Number Handling

Improved in v6.0

The rename engine picked up one new setting and several correctness fixes in v6.0.

  • Configurable leading zeros — the Issue Number Leading Zeros setting controls issue-number padding: None (44), 3 (044, the default), or 4 (0044).
  • Decimal & suffix issues preserved — point issues like 001.1 and Marvel tags like 1.MU, .NOW, and .INH keep their suffix through renaming and wanted-matching (previously Avengers 001.1 could become Avengers 001).
  • DC "One Million" issues — #1,000,000 one-shots (e.g. Action Comics 1000000) are preserved and no longer truncated to 1000.

Batched Bulk Renames

Renaming many files at once now runs as a single queued, coalesced background operation instead of one request per file. This is dramatically faster on large batches and doesn't hammer the database — progress shows in the nav operations indicator. This is mainly a performance/UX improvement; the resulting filenames are unchanged.

Oftentimes series archives or torrent files will have numerous naming patterns with information in parenthesis, brackets, before the year, after and all over the place. I continuously update these to handle as many as I encounter.

Renaming Rules

Currently renaming rules are in rename_rules.ini and are priority based

The current set of rules are always available to view in the repository and can be found here

Bare-year filenames

Fixed in v6.3

Series ### YYYY — an unparenthesized year — no longer parses the year as the issue number.

A filename like Star Wars - Poe Dameron 001 2016 fell through to the no-year pattern, which reads the last number as the issue. That parsed the issue as "2016" for every file in the series, and because Smart Rename discards the parsed series in favour of the sidecar, every file collapsed to the same name and picked up (2), (3) collision suffixes.

The {issue_year} token now also falls back to the year in the filename when ComicInfo.xml has none — previously the year group was stripped entirely for these files, since they carry no ComicInfo year.

Files already renamed into collision suffixes need a re-run

The fix corrects the parser, not files that were already renamed by the broken one. If you have a folder of Series (2).cbz, Series (3).cbz, re-run the rename on it to recover the real issue numbers.