How to Automatically Rename Images in WordPress Galleries

Last updated on May 5, 2020 by Brad Milligan

Are you looking for a quicker way to rename images you’ve uploaded to WordPress? Photos uploaded from your camera have long filenames that aren’t user friendly, and terrible for SEO. In this tutorial, we will show you how to automatically rename images in WordPress galleries.

Your image filenames are one of the key factors for ranking your photos in Google search. In other words, if you want to optimize your photos for search engines, they need to have simple, descriptive filenames (e.g. “the-beach.jpg” is an SEO-friendly filename, whereas “1919101022_n.jpg” is not).

By default, WordPress allows you to change the meta information for photos you’ve uploaded to image galleries. However, there’s no option to do this automatically. If you don’t want to do this manually for the hundreds, or even thousands, of photos that you’ve already uploaded to WordPress, you’ll need a special plugin.

To automatically rename images in WordPress galleries, you’ll need to follow these 4 steps:

• Step 1. Create an image gallery in WordPress (optional)
• Step 2. Install and activate Media File Renamer plugin
• Step 3. Change the image view in WordPress Media Library
• Step 4. Automatically rename your images

Ready to get started? Let’s go!

Step 1: Create an Image Gallery in WordPress

Once Envira has been installed and activated, simply go to Envira Gallery » Add New from your WordPress admin sidebar.

Now you should add a title for your image gallery into the Title field, and drag your photos into the Native Envira Gallery section. (You do not need to manually rename your photos before uploading them… we’ll do that in the next steps.)

Next, publish your image gallery. For more details on creating an image gallery in Envira, check out this guide on how to create an image gallery with thumbnails in WordPress.

Now, your images have been saved to the WordPress Media Library. We will automatically rename them in the following steps…

Step 2: Install and Activate Media File Renamer Plugin

Next, go to Plugins » Add New and type Media File Renamer into the search bar. It will display the plugin below.

Go ahead and install and activate the Media File Renamer plugin.

Step 3: Change the Image View in the WordPress Media Library

Once Media File Renamer has been activated, you’ll need to go to Media » Library.

Then, simply change the display of images from Grid View to List View.

Step 4: Automatically Rename Your Images

After changing the display of the images to list view, you’ll see those images with a slug, such as ‘12093536_1172086736164807_1919101022_n.jpg’, and a title such as ‘The Beach’. You’ll also see a blue Auto-Rename button.

When you click on the Auto-Rename button, it’ll change the slug to match the title. For example, ‘the-beach.jpg’.

If you want to change the name of the image manually, then simply edit the image and update the title to reflect the desired filename.

You can also automatically rename your images upon saving a post or page. Simply go to Meow Apps » Media Renamer and check mark the Rename On Save option.

Make sure to save the changes to your settings.

That’s all. We hope this article has helped you to learn how to automatically rename images in WordPress galleries. You may also want to check out our complete guide on SEO for photographers: 31 steps to rank your photos in Google.

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