Tags

To customize your filenames even further you can use tags. Tags are used to get known information about the files. All text you write will be used as filename except for all the text in <'s and >'s. If you write something like file_<name> and renames a file called notepad.exe, the result will be file_notepad.

You can use both tags and regular text in most text boxes in Advanced Renamer. Tags are most used in the New Name method but can be used in almost all the other methods.

In essense there are two types of tags. There are those with program logic, like the <Inc Nr> tag which will increment a number for each file, and there are those that just return a metadata value like <Width> and <Height> which will return the width and height of an image file. On the pages specific to the media file types you will find a list of common tags, but that is not the only ones available. If you select and file and click on the Item Details panel button on the left hand side of the program, you can see a complete list of metadata fields available for the selected file. When you click one, you can see the tag for that field in the bottom of the panel. You can then copy that tag and use it in your renaming.

Tag syntax

Alle tags are case insensitive, so <name> and <Name> are the same, but this documentation will upper case the first letter in the tag to make it more readable. Some tags have parameters, like the <Inc Nr:2> tag which will increment a number starting at 2. You can see the parameters for each tag in the documentation for that tag.

Date and time formatting

A metadata tag with the word "date" or "time" in the name, have the option to format the value using the :format parameter. For example, the <Date:format:yyyy-mm-dd> tag will return the date in the format "2023-10-01". You can find more information about this in the Date and Time tags section. Note, the formatting can be used in any tag with "date " or "time" in the name.

Zero Padding

For numeric values like <Width> and <Month>, you can specify the length of the final value by adding an additional parameter. For example, <Width:3> will return the width of an image file as a three digit number, so if the width is 1000 pixels, it will return 1000, but if the width is 10 pixels, it will return 010. You can also use the zero-notation, where the number of zeroes in the tag will determine the length of the value. For example, <Width:000> will return a three digit number with leading zeros, so if the width is 10 pixels, it will return 010.

Tag Modifiers

When you get familiar with tags, you can take a look at the more advanced use of tags called Tag Modifiers. This is a way to modify the value of a tag before it is used in the renaming. For example, you can use the <Title:lower> to use the lower case version of the title tag.

Default and alternative tag values

When using metadata values it can be useful to have a default value or an alternative tag value as a fallback if the tag is empty. This can be done with the pipe character | and double pipe ||. The single pipe is used to fallback empty values to a string, and the double pipe is used to fallback to the value of an alternative tag. For example, you can use <Artist|Unknown artist> to fallback to a string, and <Artist||Performer> to fallback to an alternative tag. Learn more about tag fallback.

Default tags
Advanced tags
Datetime tags
Datetime created tags
Datetime modified tags
Image tags
Video tags
Document tags
Audio tags
GPS location tags
File size tags
Checksum tags
Executable tags
Tag modifiers
Tag fallback