Free while we’re in preview

Get FilePilot

Renumber a photo dump, or rename a whole folder by pattern. It shows you the plan first.

The Mac button is for Apple Silicon. On an older Intel Mac, get this one instead.

One file, both ways. Double-click it for the window. Run the same file from a command prompt with arguments and it behaves as the command-line tool, because the engine is inside it. Nothing else to download and nothing to keep beside it.

Early preview. The window has been built and run, but not yet on a real Windows PC or Mac, so expect rough edges. The engine underneath it is fully tested.

One file — no installer
Runs on your machine, offline
Source code published below

Free while in preview. It isn’t signed yet, so Windows or macOS will ask you to confirm the first time you open it. At launch, FilePilot is included in every plan along with the rest of the range.

Two commands, both cautious

sequence is the one you’ll reach for. Point it at a folder of holiday photos with wildly inconsistent names, pass --pattern "photo-{n}.jpg" --pad 3 --sort mtime, and they come out numbered in the order they were taken. rename is regex find and replace on basenames, with $1 capture groups in the replacement.

Both print the full plan first, every old name against its new one. Nothing touches disk until you add --apply.

The check that runs before any of it

FilePilot builds the whole list of planned renames and looks for two problems: two source files producing the same new path, and a new path that already exists on disk without being part of the batch. Either one and it prints every collision and renames nothing whatsoever.

What this build is not

The full FilePilot concept is a dual-pane file manager with live previews and rule chains. None of that is here yet. Instant search lives in FindPilot. If you want date and size tokens plus a real undo journal, that’s FileOps.

Reading on the job itself

How to rename hundreds of files at once Check the whole batch for collisions before renaming a single file. If two files would end up with the same...

The rest of File Command Center

Bulk changes to a lot of files at once — names, places, sorting rules, or a whole plan written out in a spreadsheet.

FileOps

Vertical Ready

Rename in place with a real template language, and an undo that puts it all back.

FolderForge

Pro Ready

Write the sorting rules once. Re-run it whenever Downloads gets messy again.

FileDeck

Team Ready

A spreadsheet says what happens to each file. FileDeck does all of it, or none.

Advanced & technical details Command-line builds, source code, checksums and a recorded session — for developers and IT teams

A working CLI prototype of the bulk-rename engine: regex find/replace and sequential renumbering, with a collision check that aborts the whole batch before touching a single file. Dual-pane browsing, previews, and rules are still on the roadmap (search is covered by the sibling FindPilot tool).

Naming status

Working name only — brand verdict **AVOID** (Very High). Collision: FilePilot. Rename completely.

What it draws on

Existing paid software whose best ideas shaped this program: Directory Opus, Listary Pro, Duplicate Cleaner Pro, Advanced Renamer Commercial.

Command line

There is nothing extra to install. The program you download is the command-line tool as well: give it arguments instead of double-clicking it and it runs as one, with its output on your terminal. The standalone builds below are the same engine on its own, for machines where you would rather not ship a window at all.

FilePilot - bulk rename engine (CLI prototype)

USAGE:
  filepilot rename <dir> --match "REGEXP" --replace "TEMPLATE" [--recursive] [--apply]
  filepilot sequence <dir> --pattern "photo-{n}.jpg" [--start 1] [--pad 3] [--sort name|mtime] [--apply]
  filepilot help

COMMANDS:
  rename     Regex find/replace on file basenames.
  sequence   Renumber a batch of files sequentially using a pattern.

Both commands default to a dry run: they print the planned renames but
change nothing on disk. Pass --apply to actually perform the renames.
Run "filepilot rename -h" or "filepilot sequence -h" for command-specific
flag details.

Recorded from the shipped binary, not written by hand.

Windows (amd64) macOS (Apple Silicon) macOS (Intel) Linux (amd64)

Source

Every file the program is built from:

console.go · console_test.go · guided.go · main.go

SHA-256 checksums · build instructions & scope notes · full build plan

FilePilot

Preview