Prepending creation date to selected files using AppleScript (macOS)

I try to name all of my files using the file’s creation date as a prefix. For example:

20230504-MyNewFile.txt

If I forget, it’s a pain to rename them, so I created a short AppleScript to do it for me.

-- Prepend Creation Date to selected files
-- Install Location: ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder
-- Last Modified: 2023-05-04

tell application "Finder"
    set selectedItems to selection as list
    -- Loop through each selected item
    repeat with selectedItem in selectedItems
        set creationDate to creation date of selectedItem
        set fileName to name of selectedItem
        -- Prepend the creation date to the file name
        set newName to my stringFromDate(creationDate) & "-" & fileName
        -- Rename the file with the new name
        set name of selectedItem to newName
    end repeat
end tell


on stringFromDate(_date)
    -- yyyymmddhhmmss
    set _string to ""
    set _string to _string & my stringFromNumber(_date's year, 4)
    set _string to _string & my stringFromNumber(_date's month as integer, 2)
    set _string to _string & my stringFromNumber(_date's day, 2)
    return _string
end stringFromDate

on stringFromNumber(_number, _digitsToPad)
    return text -_digitsToPad through -1 of ("0000" & _number)
end stringFromNumber

I put the script into a Finder-specific folder, so it’s made easily available when Finder is the frontmost app: ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Finder. (I use FastScripts to make things, er, faster).

I’ve also created a version for use via Raycast, which is identical but not “compiled”, as that seems to break things in Raycast.

May 4, 2023 Workflow Reply by email