Clochette - a smart file renamer for iTunes

Introduction

Clochette is a very easy to use application that allows you to rename the files (on the file system) that correspond to selected tracks in iTunes.. in a fast and smart way.

Usage

Note: Make sure that you have disabled the Keep iTunes Music folder organized option in iTunes preferences (Preferences > Advanced). Otherwise, iTunes will rename your files again.. its proper way.

• In the iTunes main window, select the tracks that correspond to the files you want to rename .

• In the Applescript menu (still in iTunes), click the menu item labelled Clochette File Renamer.

• Choose your preferred settings in the Clochette application main window See the application contextual help for more info on tag options for building new patterns.

• Click the Rename Files button in the Clochette main window.

• Quit Clochette or go back to iTunes.

Download

The latest version of Clochette can be downloaded from the Clochette download page.

Installation

• Copy the Clochette application in your Apllications folder.

• Run Clochette. This step important: The first time you run Clochette, it installs a small and unharmful applescript in the iTunes Scripts folder (located in the ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder in your home folder). Without that script, it would not be possible to launch Clochette directly from iTunes (although Clochette would still be working as expected). If you removed the applescript from the iTunes Scripts folder, simply rerun the application to reinstall it (this option can be configured from the preferences panel).

How it works

Clochette is a suite of two small pieces of software: one main standalone application from which you configure you prefered settings and which performs all the computation and renaming, and a small applescript (no more than 4 lines of code) which launches Clochette directly from the iTunes menu bar. At first launch, Clochette will install the script at its correct location: ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/.

Requirements

For now, Clochette runs on OS X Leopard only.

There might be a future Tiger version if motivation comes from potential user demand.

As the core module that generates file names is an independent Python library, it shouldn't be too hard to adapt it to other systems or applications (as long as they are scriptable in a python way).

Licence

Clochette is a free and open source software released under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).

The original terms of the aforementioned license can be downloaded from the GPLv3 Licence page on the Free Software Foundation web site.

Donations

If you like the application and want to thank its author, you can donate him a few bucks.

Source code

You can grab a copy of the source code in its current state from the project subversion repository, by using the following *sh command line, or any subversion client with a graphical user interface:

svn checkout https://sharesource.org/svn/clochette/Clochette.app/trunk/ Clochette

Developer notes

Building the App requires Mac OS X 10.5 and its Developer Tools installed (Xcode etc.).

Clochette was developed using the Python free and open source programming language with the PyObjC bridge.