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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`

I use OpenIn for this [1] (it’s paid, but a one-time purchase at a very reasonable price). It works with URLs too, supports “browser profiles”, and lets you create logic using JavaScript (e.g., do X if the filename contains Y, or do Z if a modifier key is pressed).

It works really well and even has the ability to “fix” what external apps have changed. I plan to use this on new Macs to reconstruct my app associations and rules.

I do wish the rules were defined in plain text files — sometimes it’s hard to follow the logic through the UI and the way it handles things.

Another comment mentions Hammerspoon (which I used in the past — it was very nice). Maybe I can rebuild part of my current setup with it.