Sometimes a single renaming action is not enough.

Say you want to add holiday to the front of your new file names and make all file names lowercase, so that:

  • Image 001.gif becomes holiday image 001.gif

In this scenario, you will want to combine two renaming actions into a multi-step rename.

  1. Click the Show Advanced Sidebar button (or choose View › Toggle Sidebar)
  2. In the Advanced Sidebar, select the Actions tab
  3. At the bottom of the sidebar, click the + button to add a new action

A two-step rename in the Advanced Sidebar: the sequence number action followed by Convert to lowercase, with the This Action column in the preview showing the intermediate names

You can select which action you are editing by selecting the corresponding item in the action table.

  • Click on the + button to duplicate the current action
  • Click on the - button to delete the current action (there always needs to be at least one action)
  • Click on the X button to delete all actions except for the current one
  • Click on the filter (the funnel icon with the plus sign) button to create a filter action

You can enable or disable action by ticking or un-ticking the checkbox in the Active column. This is especially useful for adjusting your settings as it allows you to preview only the results of selected actions. Naturally when all action checkboxes are un-ticked the file names will remain unchanged.

You close the action table by clicking on the Hide Advanced Sidebar button. This option is only available when only a single action remains and this action is active.

Try it on your own files

The free trial renames up to 10 files at a time, with no time limit. Version 12.36 for macOS 15 Sequoia and later, Intel and Apple Silicon. Older macOS versions