I’ve created a web tool to batch add update dates at the beginning of filenames

Have you ever had to add update dates at the start of filenames?

For example, in some companies there are rules like:

“When uploading files to a shared folder, please add the update date at the beginning of certain filenames.”

However, when dealing with many files, this task can be surprisingly tedious and time-consuming.

Renaming each file manually every time is stressful, isn’t it?

To solve this, I developed a web tool that can process all files in a folder at once and automatically add the update date.

Since it runs in your browser, there’s no need to install anything—you can use it right away.

Please give it a try!

🌐 Try it here

💡 Use Cases

This tool is useful in the following scenarios:

✅ When you want to add dates before uploading files to a shared drive or Google Drive

✅ When you need to organize multiple files like monthly or weekly reports where update dates are important

✅ When you want to automate renaming instead of manually editing filenames one by one

✅ When you want to replace old dates in filenames with the latest update date

🛠 How to Use

１. Click the “Select Folder” button

Use your browser’s File System Access API to select the folder you want to process. (Subfolders are not included.)

２. Automatically process all files in the folder

If a date in “YYYYMMDD” format already exists at the beginning, it will be removed and replaced with the current update date.

The original files remain untouched; new copies with updated dates are created.

３. Check the results

After processing, new files like “20250717filename.txt” will appear in the folder.

🚨 Notes:

This tool only works in browsers that support the File System Access API, such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

For safety, subfolders are excluded from processing. If you accidentally select something like the C drive, it could cause serious problems—this is why the tool is limited to the selected folder only. Even with an internal blocklist, including subfolders still carries too much risk.

The tool creates copies with the update date added. Note that the “last modified” date inside the copied files will be the date they were duplicated. Please understand this limitation.

🌐 Try it here

👉 Open the tool

If you’d like to verify its safety before using, you can also download it from here and inspect the code yourself.

That’s all for the introduction of this web tool for batch adding update dates to filenames.

I hope this tool helps you streamline your workflow.

Thank you for reading until the end! 🙌

P.S.

This article was proofread using ChatGPT.

Apologies if you’re not a fan of AI-assisted editing.