In Operation
Bulky is very simple to use although there’s no drag and drop functionality.
Click the + button to add files and directories which are listed in the main section of the window. (The two buttons to the left let you remove selected files and clear respectively).
The drop down menu on the left hand side lets you perform the following actions: Replace, Remove, Insert, and Change case. You can apply the action to the entire filename, name only, or extension only.
Here’s an image of Bulky in action.
The main part of the window shows the original and replaced name for each file/directory you’ve added. Once you’re satisfied with the replaced name, just click the Rename button.
As you can see, in the example above, we’ve replaced “Screenshot from” for each filename with “Image-“.
Summary
Bulky is a simple but very useful and flexible GUI tool with support for regular expressions so you can perform fairly sophisticated bulk renaming. We’ve love to see support for drag and drop files added in a future release.
Bulk renaming can save time and help you keep your files organized, especially when dealing with a large number of files. There are other Linux utilities available that facilitate bulk renaming of files. Read our console-based apps roundup and GUI apps roundup for alternatives.
Website: github.com/linuxmint/bulky
Support:
Developer: Linux Mint
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Bulky is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary
Related Software
| GUI Batch Renamers | |
|---|---|
| KRename | Powerful batch file renamer for the KDE desktop with plugin support |
| Bulky | Developed by Linux Mint but not tied to any Linux distro or desktop |
| GPRename | GTK batch renamer for files and directories |
| Szyszka | Fast and powerful file renamer |
| CoreRenamer | Simple lightweight batch file renamer application; part of the C Suite |
| Flut Renamer | Bulk file renamer written in flutte |
| Thunar | xfce’s file manager |
| OncePower | Tool based on Flutter |
| Métamorphose | wxPython based batch renamer for files and folders |
| Caja-Rename | Batch renaming extension for Caja |
| Inviska Rename | Qt-based batch file rename utility |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |
This looks nice – but we’re still waiting for perfection here.
I like GPRename, but it can only do 1 job at a time (and if you select 3 files from a directory, it’ll open 3 windows… select 1 file and it loads all files in one window).
KRename is sweet, looks a bit like Bulky (separate window for ‘find and replace’, entry of rules to apply later etc).
I wonder if anyone will put together all the good features into a new app some day without leaving essential functions out? Something like Drag ‘n Drop, for example…
There’s no such thing as perfection with software.
That’s very true. Software can always be improved.
You don’t have to be savvy or know how to write code to offer suggestions about improving a program. The important thing is to take the effort to offer well-thought out suggestions, and raise bugs you find (every program has bugs).
I’ve no knowledge of Rust, but I made some suggestions to the developer of tap (a music player) in my recent review that I thought would massively improve tap such as gapless playback, volume control, and caching on startup.
The developer of tap has implemented all of my suggestions in less than 2 weeks. tap is now just mind-staggeringly awesome.
Sure, a terminal-based music player won’t be the perfect fit for everyone. And there’s still a few things I will suggest that would make it even more awesome.
I guess it depends on the developer and how interested they are hearing suggestions. When I raised an issue on a GitHub repository the developer closed it without comment.
Yes, that does happen. When I raised an issue re memory consumption of a music program, the developer just closed it saying it’s fine to have a simple music program using over 1GB of RAM for a moderate sized music collection. The huge memory usage is just for caching cover art at high resolutions.
But, like anything, a bizarre incident shouldn’t put anyone off raising issues. Many open source developers are very grateful for feedback.
Yeah it looks quite limited wrt GUI functionality. Regex is powerful, though those who master that will be fine with cli.
As a point of comparison you might want to look at a windows counterpart; Bulk Rename Utility.KRename does offer some quite useful and intuitive features, though BRU has more to offer.
Did this in PERL.
This thing is such a darned useful utility. I got to know about it in Mint in Nemo.
A regex or straight text renamer. Simple and direct. There are many advanced batch rename utilities.. but they are way overkill for me. Kudos to the developer!
When I switched to Debian KDE I missed it badly in dolphin. I installed the app as instructed before. and created a servicemenu so bulky can be solicited with the selected files. Perfecto.
If anyone wants the simple servicemenu. it is below.
Thanks