Name Mangler 3 App Reviews

Name mangler is one of those utilities that saves you so much time and frustration, it pays for itself after the first few times you use it. I upgraded machines and saw that there was a new version and immediately purchased it because this app has been so useful to me over the years. The new features are incredible and if you havent watched the video on the website that gives you a walk through of the new features, GO WATCH IT NOW. Then you wont need me to tell you to buy the app. I’m a web developer at home on the command line, but there is just no easy way to to do the complex renaming that this app can do from the command line. Therefore I have an alias saved in my ~/.bash_profile where I can type a command `mangle`, pass it one parameter (the path to a folder, a group of files, or a dot for the current folder) and it launches into the app for me: alias mangle=open -a "Name Mangler" Your welcome ;)

I don’t always rename tons of files at once, but when I do, I prefer Name Mangler.

This is the file renaming app youve always wanted. You can do whatever you like, replace names or parts of names, add sequences, add a prefix or a suffix, change the file extension and there are so many more options. Im glad I finally found this app.

I had to rename a few thousand files from JJJJ_MM_DD to JJJJ-MM-DD and it worked perfectly fast and did not pose any problems whatsoever. The reason I give it only four stars is the help and introduction for the advanced script language - there is not much to read there and you basically won’t get it unless you are a seasoned programmer. With a little more help I think I could maybe use the scripts too.

If wish all the apps were as easy and working as smoothly as this one.. great little utility.

Always a pleasure firing up this app. Fast, simple, straight to the point.

Had a previoulsy paid version of NameMangler, to which I had performed what seemed to be a normal updating of the software and it was a new version. But the new version completely ignored my existing license (and I dont have an old copy of the software) so I went ahead a decided to buy it through the App store. I first purchased it using my shiny new laptop, then Id just install it on the other later - not realising that it was a 10.8 only release (I mean why should I have looked at the requirements when the same application just got foisted upon my 10.7 machine!) Dissappointed...

There is no way to filter files so that only the files matching a pattern are modified. There is no way to modify only the files in one folder without including all of the sub-folders. There are some genuinely odd notions in the UI…for example, clicking on a file in the list does not select it, but changes what information is displayed. Files are not listed by folder (and cannot be.) The whole thing is quite unique and non-obvious and certainly doesnt behave like any other Apple app I have used. Do you want to include just the year a file was created in the name? Sorry, you cannot. You can include both the year and time, but not the seconds. It is this continual set of strange limitations lurking at every corner that make using this app nothing but frustrating. To their credit, the customer service has been simply outstanding: Intelligent answers, really understanding my questions, and taking time to solve renaming problems has been most unusual. Really, you dont get this good of service from many companies. They do care about the product, clearly. It is a shame that LSD and a desire to defy every Apple UI convention has driven their interface design. I understand that pepperoni pizza isnt always for everybody, but I dont want a pizza with cabbage, sushi, apple, and corn-nuts. Unfortunately, their UI is more like this strange concoction of a pizza. I really want to like this product. But my life doesnt revolve around renaming files. Unless yours does, you probably dont want to take the time to figure out how to use this app…unless the number of files you have is small and your needs are trivial. In that case, why pay $10 to buy this app? PS: I could go on about hos S-L-O-W the UI is. Renaming files is lightning fast. But making changes to the UI can sometimes mean waiting 10~15 seconds for the controls to refresh. For example, clicking an increment control on the starting index point can take this long.

Did my research and this is the best bulk-renaming tool out there. Its easy, beautiful and best of all, the interface is intuitive. The non-apple store version is slightly different, but not enough to warrent a non-apple store purchase. I like purchasing through the apple store so much better, makes it so much easier to manage all my apps.

Pros: Fast, undo feature. Has ability to form complex names. Cons: If you want to use EXIF data in a file and rename based on the date it was taken. Unable to do that. I would try another product for that feature. The program does not read the files directly so it is limited in this aspect. Othwerwise, a decent program to use. The Appstore version is sanboxed and has issues with drag and drop of folders.

I regularly have to rename thousands of files at a time and Name Mangler always gets the job done with ease. Support from the developer is awesome with any questions and even help with RegEx are answered on a mailing list very quicky.

I searched for years for a file renaming app that was understandable to the layperson yet powerful enough to do basic tasks. I found it two years ago in Name Mangler. Ive consistently upgraded at every opportunity, and just bought it via the App Store even though I already own it so Ill never have to worry about a direct install again. Name Mangler is superb. Its powerful, fast, and easy to use. If you want to get tricky with Regular Expressions, you can. The app even has some basic RegEx snippets installed for you to play with. I dont usually rave about software, but this is one app that deserves it. If you need to rename batches of files, you will not regret buying Name Mangler.

After a graphic designer misnamed lots and lots and lots of files… this was a very useful tool in renaming them the correct way. I just happened to catch wind of it during a random Google search. Very happy with purchase.

This app simply works! I use it often without any confusion. The app is essential for me, because I could not find any other way to do file re-naming. The application can add prefixes, it can strip out illegal characters (for Windows) and lots more. I use this app often and have only experienced successes.

I often write build scripts and small utitlity apps to help with my workflow; however, they constantly need tweaking as things change. Name Mangler saves me from all of that tedious work, and having the ability to preview and even rollback saves me from mistakes. Plus, it’s just kinda cool to watch. The only thing that might make it better for me right now is an animation of Santa dancing and changing each file name.

I am a pro photographer and needed to change the starting 3 letters of 500 photos names. Downloaded this program and it did the job in seconds. Great utility.

Not much to be said, this product has saved me so much time it’s not even funny. Seems pretty fast and powerful to me, and haven’t had any technical glitches yet. Worth far more than the price, based on how much time and headache it’s saved me. (That said, I always make a copy of a directory before doing any type of mass change, whether with Name Mangler or any other tool…)

I have loved and used this for years, and will still use it with joy, but was hesitant to try the Apple App Store version of a file system utility, mainly because in recent years, the iOS glorified iPad apps rules for products pretending to be OSX utilities make most things useless to release on the App Store. Interestingly, because I assumed file renaming (not file content reading) could perhaps be achieved in the ridiculous user-hostile iOS “sandbox”, I happily paid the nearly 19 dollars for this 2014 September version of “Name Mangler 3”. WHAT A NIGHTMARE ! In the first 2 hours of usage I had to laboriosly dismiss over 200 nag warning dialogs halting my every move. If it was a genuine OSX utility, because all my removable drive volumes were designated in the finder as “IGNORE OWNERSHIP FOR THIS VOLUME” there should not have been a fiasco. Wrong, Apple iOS ignores this user setting in the Finder. But this is a glorified iPad app version, not a tool compiled to use genuine OSX libraries from the developers site. Therefore, though the programmer could possibly have noticed the 200 error dialogs and then hinted at a workaround, or warned me of a workaround upon intial launch, I sufferred and nearly demanded my money back until I found a one time hack, per drive. I cannot reveal it, probably the same way the programmer can’t , due to censorship or some license rule, but you can figure it out. I learned my lesson though, this is the first and last product i will ever buy on App Store that is meant to dou OSX utility actions, or access files. Second sad problem : It defaults to light font on grey background for majority text and is unreadable and horrid ! The top 50 web sites in user popularity are all 100% pure black font on pure white background. This legibility is not a coincidence. The other web sites dropped out of the top 50 rank over a decade ago. The top 50 web sites are all pure black on white for a reason, as are all PROPERLY WRITTEN genuine OSX applications. Not this new nasty hostile version. UGH!!! Unreadable text! Thankfully there is a preference option to revert this font abomination ! I think the developer must not be familiar with how Mac OSX users and proper font usage works. The Top 50 web sites in history are that way for a reason. There are also countless psychology fontography books that include timed legibility metrics for over the past 50 years on thousands of test subjects that prove this point of BLACK over WHITE, for superior high speed legibility comprehension. Third problem, because I accidently bought this iOS glorified iPad app from the App Store instead a genuine OSX version from the developers site, if it gets auto-updated by “App Store: version that crashes with my particular OS or Machine, I can’t revert back to a working version very easily. Upon reading the few complaints this app ever got in history, that scenario actually happened to some 10.6.X OSX users who briefly got useless versions of this app. Avoiding the App Store would avoid this downgrade crash in the future, when the developer might stop actively test-supporting your machine or your OS. This tool is worth far more than its price, because it does 100 AMAZING things no other tool does on Windows, Mac, or Linux, but the version bought from the App Store is a near unusable waste of money for some experts, unless the purchasers stumble upon the unmentionable unspeakable secret workaround to avoid the sandbox that the developer could streamline into the first launch, if they cared to annoy the powers that be. I can only rate this version 4 stars not 5 because of these GENUINE problems.

I’ve used this app in so many complex situation dealing with batch renaming file and their extensions. It’s extremly fast and reliable.

There are a number of filename changing utilities on the App Store. This is by far the best one Ive found. It lives up to its claims. Easy user interface that is designed for an efficient workflow and VERY fast renaming, even with very large lists of files. Blows the others away. Excellent job! (Moom, another app of theirs, is also nearly indispensible for me)