Filename Sanitizer
Clean up messy filenames in bulk — illegal characters, stray spaces, accents, and inconsistent casing — all previewed before you download.
Rules
How to use Filename Sanitizer
- Start by providing the required input: Drop files to clean up.
- Set the inputs and options shown here: Remove illegal / risky characters (\ / : * ? " < > |), Replace spaces with dashes, Strip accents (é → e), Force lowercase, Collapse multiple dashes/underscores.
- Run the tool with Preview.
- Review the results, then choose an output control: Download Cleaned Files.
Filenames that break on a different operating system
A filename with a colon, a question mark, or a trailing space can work fine on macOS and then fail to copy onto a Windows drive, sync to a cloud service, or paste cleanly into a URL. Cleaning up risky characters, spacing, and accents in bulk prevents that class of problem before it happens.
Choosing which cleanup rules to apply
Each rule — illegal characters, spaces to dashes, accent stripping, lowercase, and collapsing repeated separators — can be toggled independently, so you can apply only what your situation actually needs rather than an all-or-nothing cleanup.
Which characters count as "illegal"?
\ / : * ? " < > | — these break on Windows and cause problems in URLs and many command-line tools even on systems that technically allow them.
Will sanitizing change my file extensions?
Extensions are preserved and lowercased automatically; only the filename portion before the final dot is affected by the cleanup rules.
What happens to a filename that's entirely symbols?
If cleanup would leave an empty name, the file is automatically renamed to a generic "file" placeholder rather than producing a blank filename.