Quick Start Guide
A native macOS app that tidies a messy folder of movie & TV files into the clean, predictable layout that Plex and Jellyfin expect — so your library just works. You preview everything first; nothing changes on disk until you say so.
Get Media Renamer
Download the latest build from the Releases page. Open the .dmg and drag MediaRenamer into your Applications folder (or unzip the .zip and move the app there yourself).
First launch only: clear Gatekeeper once
The app is signed but not notarised, so macOS blocks the first open. Do it once and it opens normally ever after. Pick whichever suits you (each assumes the app is in /Applications):
- Easiest — any macOS (one Terminal line)
- Run
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/MediaRenamer.app, then double-click the app as usual. - No Terminal — macOS 15 Sequoia / macOS 26 Tahoe
- Double-click once (it’s blocked — click Done), then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security, and click Open Anyway; authenticate and confirm.
- No Terminal — macOS 14 Sonoma
- Control-click (right-click) the app → Open → Open. (Sonoma only — don’t double-click first.)
It’s safe to explore
Choosing a folder only previews a plan — it reads names, it doesn’t touch your files. The app changes nothing on disk until you click Apply and confirm. Renaming never overwrites an existing file, and anything sent to the Trash can be restored with Finder’s Put Back. Still, the golden rule with any bulk tool: try it on a copy first.
The 30-second version
- Choose a folder of video files (and their subtitles).
- Read the preview — every old → new name, grouped into TV, Movies, Unchanged, and Skipped.
- Adjust if needed — fix a title, keep or un-keep an acronym, choose which junk to bin, label duplicate versions.
- Apply — confirm, and the renames happen (plus junk to the Trash, and empty leftover folders cleaned up).
1 Open the app & choose a folder
When Media Renamer launches it’s empty and waiting. Click Choose Folder… (the folder button at the top-left) and pick the folder you want to organise — for example a Downloads/TV folder full of scene-named files. The app scans one level deep: loose files at the top, plus the immediate sub-folders.
2 Read the plan
As soon as you pick a folder you get a complete preview — no changes yet. The sidebar on the left groups everything it found:
- TV and Movies — the files that will be renamed.
- Unchanged — already named correctly (the app leaves them alone).
- Skipped — it couldn’t recognise an episode code or a year, so it won’t guess. Everything inside a skipped folder is left completely alone, junk included.
Select All items at the top to see every entry as a card showing the live rename — the new name in green, with the original filename beneath it. Along the bottom, colour-coded summary chips tally how many items fall into each bucket, and the bar tells you exactly how many files will move and how much junk will go to the Trash.
Edit a title or year anytime
Every item has editable Title (and, for movies, Year) fields. Type a correction and the plan re-computes instantly — including the destination folder name. Titles are capitalised automatically, and hyphens are preserved.
3 TV shows & seasons
A show that spans several seasons appears as a single row that expands into a Season tree — click it to reveal each season, or use Expand all / Collapse all. Selecting the show lets you edit the title once for every season; selecting a single season focuses just its files. Scattered loose episodes of the same show are gathered together automatically, and each season is filed into its own Season N/ folder.
4 Acronyms — keep them shouting, or not
Automatic capitalisation would happily turn FBI into “Fbi”. To prevent that, the app spots all-caps words in your titles and shows them in the acronym bar across the top, each with a keep / Title toggle. The app pre-selects keep for short acronyms (about four letters or fewer) and Title for longer all-caps words — flip either as needed. With keep, FBI stays FBI; choose Title for a word that should be capitalised normally. Your choices are remembered for next time.
5 Send the junk to the Trash
Sample clips, cover art, screenshots, “proof” images — the flotsam that ships alongside a download — are flagged as junk. For any item being renamed that contains some, the inspector lists each junk file with a checkbox. Checked files go to the macOS Trash when you Apply; un-check anything you’d rather keep. Because it’s the real Trash, you can always Put Back later.
Junk is only ever collected from the items the app is actually restructuring. If it skipped a folder, or left one alone because it was already named correctly, nothing inside that folder is counted, listed, or trashed — the Junk tally covers only what you can see and un-tick.
6 Two copies of the same thing? Keep both.
If two files would land on the same name — say a 1080p and a 720p rip of one movie — they’re flagged duplicate. Instead of skipping one, the resolver lets you keep them all: it reads each file’s quality and pre-fills a version label, and shows a live preview of the result. Click Resolve and both versions land in one folder as Title (Year) - 1080p BluRay.mkv and … - 720p BluRay.mkv — exactly the “versions” layout Plex and Jellyfin understand. Prefer to do nothing? Skip (leave all) leaves them untouched.
What happens to unresolved duplicates?
If you leave a duplicate unresolved, those colliding files are simply skipped at Apply — nothing is overwritten or lost. You can come back and resolve them on a later run.
7 Apply — the only step that touches disk
Happy with the preview? Click Apply renames in the bottom bar. A confirmation dialog sums up exactly what will happen — how many files move, how many go to the Trash — and reminds you that nothing gets overwritten. Click Apply Renames to go ahead, or Cancel to keep tweaking.
8 Done — and safe to run again
Apply does the work — renames, sends the checked junk to the Trash, and tidies up any now-empty source folders — then re-scans and reports a quick summary. After organising, every renameable item shows up as Unchanged; the only thing left is the one file it couldn’t recognise, still parked under Skipped. Running Media Renamer again on an already-tidy folder does nothing, so it’s safe to re-run anytime new files arrive.
Reference
What the app treats each file as
| Kind | What it is | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Video | .mkv | Renamed into the Plex/Jellyfin layout. |
| Subtitle (sidecar) | .srt .sub .idx .ass .ssa .vtt | Renamed to sit beside its video, keeping recognised language codes. |
| Junk | Anything else, plus names like sample, screens, proof, thumbs | Offered for the Trash (per-file checkbox) — only inside items being renamed. |
| Ignored | Library folders Movies/Music/TV and hidden/metadata files (.DS_Store, ._*) | Left completely alone. |
How names are decided
- TV vs. Movie
- An episode code (S01E01, S01E01-E02, four-digit seasons like S2024E01…) means TV. Otherwise a release year means a movie. Neither? It’s skipped.
- Finding the year
- A clean Title (YYYY) wins; otherwise a scene-style .YYYY. next to a quality tag; otherwise the right-most plausible year — so a year that’s part of the title (e.g. Blade Runner 2049) isn’t mistaken for a release year.
- Tidying the title
- Dots become spaces, : becomes “ - ”, hyphens are kept, and the title is Title-Cased with small words (a, the, of…) left lowercase — except the first and last words, which are always capitalised. AKA titles keep the English side.
Good to know
- Preview is read-only. Only Apply writes to disk, and it always confirms first.
- Nothing is overwritten. If a target name already exists, that item is skipped.
- Junk is recoverable. It goes to the macOS Trash — use Finder’s Put Back to undo.
- Renames don’t have an in-app undo, so review the preview before applying. Working on a copy is the safest habit.
- It re-runs cleanly. The app recognises its own output, so re-scanning an organised folder is a no-op.