Folder renaming not working on Mac

[gsinovsky]

Hi, I’m trying out mp3tag on Mac, and I need to rename the folder the tracks I have loaded are in using tag information, but it’s not working. After following the instructions in other posts, I’m using the Tag - Tag option with _DIRECTORY, but when I confirm, nothing happens, and the folder isn't renamed. Am I using it correctly? I've tried loading the parent folder containing the folder, granting full disk access to the app, and nothing. I'm on Tahoe 26.0.1.

[Florian]

Can you post a screenshot of what you've entered as format string and what you expected the target folders to look like?

[gsinovsky]

Hi Florian, thanks for the prompt response.

Here is the screenshot:

I expect this to rename the folder containing the tracks to what’s below the Formatstring, “Little Bird CDM,” in this case. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding how the functionality works?

This is the folder hierarchy:

Desktop (root folder for mp3tag)

— /Folder

        Tracks

And I want to rename “Folder” to the album title.

[Florian]

OK, I'm sorry — I read your previous post on the go. _DIRECTORY and _FILENAME are not available as fields at Convert → Tag - Tag for the Mac version.

It's possible that your files now have a _DIRECTORY field, which you can double-check and remove via View → Extended Tags....

---

To achieve your goal, you can an action Format tag field, which fills fields or renames files and folders based on other fields content or fixed text.

This action also offers _DIRECTORY and _FILENAME as fields, where the former really renames the directory of the files. This means, that other files like PDF, JPG, & PNG files in the folder would also be moved to the new folder.

You can try this action type via Actions → Quick Actions → Format tag field and if you are happy with your experiments, you could create via Actions → Actions an action group "Move Files" with one or two actions Format tag field one for _DIRECTORY (which renames the containing folder) and one for _FILENAME (which renames the files).

[gsinovsky]

That works, many thanks!

Another question, is there a way to escape square brackets? I noticed if I do this

The brackets are not included on the folder name

[ohrenkino]

@gsinovsky

The brackets are not included on the folder name

See the documentation on special characters in format strings:

Format Strings and Available Placeholders

Mp3tag uses format strings in various of its features to describe the structure of file names and imported data. A format string is built of either standard text (e.g., Music), placeholders (such as %artist%, %title%, ...), or slash characters / that usually denote directory structures. Characters with Special Functionality Some characters have special functionality and need to be treated with extra care. If you experience some unexpected behavior when using format string, check if some of t…

Try ' (single quote) around the parenthesis.

[gsinovsky]

Got it, thank you both.