How to rename a large list of files on mac


  • I was changing some settings on the daily note plugin in one of my Obsidian vaults a couple of weeks ago.
  • I didn’t notice the space in the new file name for my daily note.
  • It looks like there is a bug.
  • Here is the double space in the daily note setting: double space in setting screenshot
  • Here is what the files looked like in Obsidian. There is actually 2 spaces before the dash in the file name however, Obsidian doesn’t render that as 2 spaces which makes it difficult to see the issue. double space in setting screenshot

Steps to resolve the issue.

  1. Change the configuration in Daily Note so that new files are created as expected.
  2. Rename all of the previous files so the plugin knows about them AND the backlinks work correctly.
    1. rename 's/ - / - /g' * (note: If you don’t have the rename command in terminal, get it with brew install rename)