Renamr
A fast, cross-platform media renamer — a ground-up rewrite of FileBot (via its FB-Mod fork), built from scratch as its own project: new stack, new architecture, new branding.
Status: early scaffold, but the core loop works end to end. The naming-expression engine is ported and tested, the faithfully-recreated two-pane UI is wired to real native file/folder loading and drag-and-drop, local filename-based season/episode detection ("Match") is working, and the actual on-disk rename operation is wired up (same-directory rename, skip-on-conflict, with a confirmation step showing the full old-name/new-name plan before anything touches disk — there is no undo yet). Full media-metadata bindings, the fuzzy similarity/matching engine, and online metadata lookups are not yet ported. See "Porting roadmap" below.
Why a rewrite, and why this stack
The original is a ~20k+ line Java/Swing app built with Ant. The goals were: faster startup and UI, faster matching/renaming, a codebase that's actually pleasant to work in, and a genuine rebrand — not a coat of paint.
Renamr is Tauri: a Rust core (crates/renamr-core, src-tauri) plus a
TypeScript/React frontend (src), compiled to a small native binary per platform
(Windows/macOS/Linux) with a system webview instead of shipping a bundled browser
engine. That's the concrete "faster" win over both the original JVM/Swing app and
an Electron-style rewrite: quick cold start, small binary, real OS-native windowing.
An earlier attempt used Kotlin + Compose Multiplatform to stay on the JVM and reuse FileBot's Java logic directly. That was abandoned (nothing was salvaged into this repo) after discovering the sandbox this was originally built in blocks Maven Central and the Gradle Plugin Portal, making it impossible to compile or test. Tauri was chosen as the replacement because both halves — Cargo via crates.io, npm via the public npm registry — are reachable, so every piece described as "done" below is actually compiled/tested, not just written and hoped for.
Compatibility notes
Goal: keep CLI flags, config file locations, and the outer { } naming-scheme
template syntax compatible with FileBot conventions, so existing automation mostly
keeps working.
One deliberate gap: FileBot's { } expressions ran arbitrary Groovy code
(JVM-only). Renamr's Rust core has no Groovy engine, so expressions are evaluated with
Rhai instead. Simple bindings ({n}, {s00e00}, {t}) are
identical. More complex chained-method expressions will need small syntax tweaks
(e.g. Groovy's .toUpperCase() → Rhai's .to_upper()) — Rhai already ships most of the
common string/array methods FileBot's expression helpers wrapped, so most patterns
translate directly.
Project layout
crates/renamr-core/ Pure Rust core: naming-expression engine (ported), local
filename-based season/episode matching (ported, `matching/`), and
the on-disk rename engine (ported for the same-directory case,
`rename/`) — skip-on-conflict, no move/organize-into-folders yet.
Not yet ported: the fuzzy similarity engine, full media metadata
bindings, web datasource clients (TMDB/TVDB/AniDB/etc). No Tauri
dependency, so it builds and unit-tests standalone.
src-tauri/ Tauri app shell: exposes renamr-core as commands to the frontend
(naming-scheme rendering, filename matching, executing a rename
plan, native file/folder dialogs, drag-and-drop expansion), app
metadata/icons/window config (tauri.conf.json).
src/ React + TypeScript UI (Vite). Faithful recreation of the original
two-pane rename screen (Aurora theme) wired to real file loading,
drag-and-drop, live naming-scheme preview, local matching, and a
confirm-before-touching-disk modal for the actual rename.
scripts/gen_icons.py Regenerates src-tauri/icons/ (placeholder branding — swap the
colors/glyph in the script, or replace the icons directly, to
change the look).
Building
Prerequisites: Rust (stable) + Cargo, Node.js 18+, and Tauri's platform prerequisites
(see https://v2.tauri.app/start/prerequisites/ — on Linux this means
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libgtk-3-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev and a C
toolchain; macOS/Windows need Xcode / the VS Build Tools + WebView2 respectively).
# Rust core (no UI deps needed):
cargo test -p renamr-core
# Full app in dev mode (opens a native window):
npm install
npm run tauri dev
# Production build (installer/bundle for your current OS):
npm run tauri build
Verified in the environment this was built in: cargo test -p renamr-core (all
passing), cargo check -p renamr (compiles clean against real Tauri + GTK/WebKit
system libraries), and npm run build (TypeScript type-checks, Vite bundles). The
actual GUI window has not been visually verified anywhere yet — that sandbox has no
display. Run npm run tauri dev on your machine to see and click through it for the
first time.
Porting roadmap (not yet done)
Roughly in priority order — each references the original FileBot source file it's ported from, for anyone picking this up:
- Full naming-scheme bindings —
net.filebot.format.MediaBindingBean(1354 lines): all the{n},{s00e00},{airdate},{vf}(video format), etc. binding properties. Currently only whatever bindings you pass in manually are available. - String/expression helper methods —
net.filebot.format.ExpressionFormatMethods(636 lines): FileBot-specific Groovy string extensions like.pad(),.sortName(). Only a small subset (any,all_of,concat) is ported so far (crates/renamr-core/src/format/functions.rs); Rhai's built-ins cover some of the rest already. - Matching/similarity engine —
net.filebot.similarity.*. Local filename-based season/episode detection is done (crates/renamr-core/src/matching, ported from the pattern-matching half ofSeasonEpisodeMatcher.java, adapted to Rust'sregexcrate which lacks lookahead/lookbehind — wired to the "Match" button). Still not ported:EpisodeMetrics.java(849 lines, the fuzzy title-matching score cascade used once there's an actual metadata source to score candidates against) andDateMatcher. - Media detection —
net.filebot.media.MediaDetection(1356 lines): ties file-name parsing + matching together to auto-identify what a file is. - Web datasource clients —
net.filebot.web.*(~40 files): TheMovieDB, TheTVDB, AniDB, OMDb, TVmaze, OpenSubtitles, etc. Usereqwest+serde_json/serde. - Rename engine + CLI —
net.filebot.cli.CmdlineOperations(1235 lines) andArgumentBean(415 lines, the full flag surface:-rename,--db,--format,--action,--conflict,-get-subtitles,-script, etc.). The core same-directory rename operation is done (crates/renamr-core/src/rename, fixed skip-on-conflict policy, wired to the UI's Rename button behind a confirmation step). Not yet done: the--actionvariants beyond rename-in-place (move/copy/symlink to a different folder, which is what lets a naming scheme like{n}/{s00e00}organize files into subfolders), the--conflictvariants beyond skip (auto-number, override), and the CLI flag surface itself. - The rest of the UI — the Rename panel (file loading, drag-drop, live preview, local matching, confirmed rename) is built; the other five sidebar panels (Episodes/Subtitles/SFV/Filter/List) are still stub screens, plus Align up/down reordering, History, and Presets on the Rename panel itself are no-ops. There's also no per-item exclude inside the rename confirmation modal yet (it's all-or-nothing — use "Exclude Selected" on the file list beforehand to leave a file out entirely).
- Undo/history for renames — there is no undo yet; the confirmation modal before
Rename executes is the only safety net right now.
net.filebot.HistoryDialog/the original's rename-history log is the reference for what a real undo would look like. - Packaging — code signing, auto-update, installers per platform via
npm run tauri build.