A tiny shell script for renaming photos

After a long weekend away my camera folder looked like a drawer of loose keys: files named IMG_4021.JPG, DSC00318.JPG and a few that a phone had called something else entirely. I wanted them sorted by the moment they were taken, in folders by month.

The script

It relies on exiftool, which is in most package managers:

#!/bin/sh
# usage: sortphotos.sh /path/to/messy-folder
set -eu
src=${1:?folder needed}
exiftool -r -d "%Y/%m" \
  '-Directory<DateTimeOriginal' \
  '-FileName<${DateTimeOriginal}_%f.%e' \
  -d "%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S" "$src"

The first date format puts each picture in a year and month folder. The second prefixes the file name with the exact time, so names sort the same way as the moments they record.

Two cautions

Run it on a copy first. Files without a recorded date will be left alone, and you can list them afterwards with a simple search. I found a dozen screenshots hiding among the holiday photos that way.

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