FileBot Review
Last Updated: Feb 10, 2022
| Rating |  |
| Price | Free |
| Features | Organize Your Media |
| Download Cover Art | |
| Download Subtitles | |
| Help Your Organization |
FileBot may be just what you need to help get your messy video files in order. The software goes a bit further than that, however, in that it allows you to download cover art and subtitles for your content. If you’re still not convinced; it also works for your audio files. All your music and video can now be organized easily and you can finally get rid of that mess on your hard drive.
How it Works
FileBot takes your files and automatically looks for the correct titles based on the data source that you prefer. There are several online sources to choose from.
The format engine on this software allows you to customize how your files are named, so you can go with an organizational scheme you already have in effect if you prefer to. Having all your files with a standardized name format makes it a lot easier to keep everything in order and to ensure that, when you search for a file, you remember how it was named and that you’ve got much better chances of actually finding it.
All you have to do to rename your files is drag and drop them in the interface. The application is platform independent and even works off of a command line if you want to do things the old-fashioned way and not use the drag and drop. The drag and drop only requires you to put your file in the interface and to wait while FileBot looks up the appropriate name for your file.
You can draw from sources such as OpenSubtitiles, TheMovieDB and IMDb, so you’ll definitely have access to good data to use for renaming your files. The subtitle find service is a great addition, as well.
Features
- A simple user-interface tuned for drag-n-drop (no need to bother with file dialogs)
- Platform-independent and straight-forward application deployment
- Powerful and full-featured cmdline interface and scripting interface for any kind of automation
- Rename and move hundreds of media files in a matter of seconds
- Fetch episode info from TheTVDB, AniDB or TVmaze
- Accurate and robust and simply awesome file / episode matching logic
- Series / Anime / Movie name auto-detection
- Powerful and highly customizable episode naming scheme - media info optional
- Supports language preferences for series and episode titles
- Supports movie identification and renaming via TheMovieDB
- Reverse rename files using internal history or the original torrent file
- Download subtitles
- Download subtitles from OpenSubtitles
- Advanced logic for matching files to most suitable subtitles
- Find exact subtitles on OpenSubtitles
- Upload subtitles with movie hash to OpenSubtitles
- Integrated subtitle viewer for srt, ass and sub files
- Transcode any subtitle as UTF-8 encoded srt
- Verify SFV files
- Easily create and verify sfv, md5, sha1 and sha256 files
- Aware of checksums that are embedded in the filename - common in anime releases
- Directly compare two or more directory trees
- Auto-lookup of any existing file verification
- Identify and rename music using AcoustID audio-fingerprints and MusicBrainz info.
- Extract files from zip, multi-volume rar and 7zip archives as well as ISO images.
Getting the Software
While this software can be downloaded for free from the project website, you wll be required to purchase license to enjoy the full features of this application. You can either purchase a 1 year universal license for $6.00 or a lifetime universal license for $48.00.
FileBot is updated on a regular basis and it’s a great way to keep all your video and audio files organized in a way that makes them much easier to deal with. It latest version, FileBot 4.9.2 was released in September 2020 and has several enhancements and additional commands. If you’re tired of how messy these files tend to become and you want everything standardized, FileBot could help you do that without a huge investment of time and that alone makes it worth giving a shot.
There are several installers and packages available on the FileBot website. It is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux. Below is the complete list of available downloads.
- Windows Installer: FileBot_4.9.2_x64.msi
- macOS installer: FileBot_4.9.2.pkg
- Ubuntu / Debian package: FileBot_4.9.2_amd64.deb
- Ubuntu / Debian package is available via APT
- Fedora / openSUSE / CentOS package: FileBot_4.9.2_amd64.rpm
- Fedora / openSUSE / CentOS package is available via DNF and YUM
- POSIX portable tarball: FileBot_4.9.2-portable.tar.xz for other Linux and FreeBSD devices
- Windows package is available via Chocolatey
- macOS package is available via brew cask
- Synology NAS package is available via Package Center
- QNAP NAS package is available via App Center
- Arch Linux package is available via AUR
- Universal Linux package is available via Snapcraft
- Docker images are available on Docker Hub
- All packages are available on their Release Index
You can purchase either a 1 year universal license or a lifetime license:
- 1 year - $6.00
- Lifetime - $48.00
Before purchasing a license, make sure you evaluate FileBot first and download it from their website. A single per-user license is valid on all platforms and can be used on multiple machines. Microsoft Store and Mac App Store purchases neither include nor require a universal license.
What’s New with FileBot
From our last update on this software back in 2019, Filebot has been further developed in 2020 with the release of their version 4.9. Two latest versions were released in March and September of 2020 and they’ve included several enhancements and additional commands and features which includes:
- Added Edit Format / Edit Match / Edit Name context menu
- Added Smart Mode: Attributes matcher (i.e. xattr / exif / id3 / atom)
- Use F2 shortcut for Plain File Mode
- Use F3 shortcut for Local Xattr Mode
- Enable selected post-processing features via Filter ➔ Attributes ➔ Apply
- Enable clone (on macOS / apfs) and reflink (on Linux / btrfs) by default for all COPY operations
- Enhanced manual search to support both search by name and lookup by id
- Added dynamic binding (e.g. map between TheTVDB and AniDB episode objects)
- Added {vs} standard media {source} tag
- Added {historic} binding for looking up the original file path of {f} (e.g. useful for -exec post-processing commands)
- Improved -mediainfo -exec pipeline
- Added -no-probe option to disable media parser (e.g. match files without reading file contents)
- Added -no-index option to disable local media indices (i.e. improved support for low-memory devices)
- Added –apply option (e.g. –apply artwork nfo url metadata)
- Added –mapper option (e.g. –mapper AnimeList.AniDB)
- Enable Dark Mode by default on Windows and macOS (depending on system settings)
- Enhanced Progress Monitor and Dialog UI
- Enhanced native Desktop integration
- Enhanced configuration options for Presets
- Restore window bounds and window state on startup (and actively prevent off-screen windows)
- Enhanced file path validation on Linux (e.g. GVFS)
- Optimize History write operations
- Improved support for –mode interactive on Windows
- Added support for macOS Big Sur
For the full list of updates on FileBot, you may check the forums page of their website.
