---
title: "Batch Rename Photos by Date Using EXIF Data on Linux"
language: en
topics: ["apple", "cloud", "linux"]
full_article_url: https://willem.com/en/2020-08-31_free-from-the-icloud-escaping-apple-photos/
---
# Batch Rename Photos by Date Using EXIF Data on Linux

*Use exiftool to rename thousands of photos to YYYYMMDD-HHMM format in seconds.*

> After exporting your photos from Apple Photos, you're left with meaningless filenames like IMG_4523.jpg. Here's how to batch rename them all by their actual creation date using EXIF metadata and a single terminal command.

With your photos freed from Apple Photos, the next step is renaming every file to something meaningful. The **exiftool** command on Linux (also available on macOS) reads the EXIF creation date embedded in each photo and renames the file accordingly.

The command: `exiftool -d '%Y%m%d-%H%M%%-03.c.%%e' '-filename<CreateDate'`



This renames every photo to a `YYYYMMDD-HHMM` format — so `IMG_4523.jpg` becomes `20190614-1423.jpg`. Run it on a powerful machine if you have thousands of photos; Willem ran his on a server to speed things up.

This snippet is from the complete guide to [escaping Apple's photo ecosystem](https://willem.com/en/inside-and-outside-apple-using-questioning-and-escaping-the-ecosystem/).