Smart Rename

This is a plugin for Obsidian that adds the command Smart Rename which performs the following steps after renaming the note:

1. Adds the previous title as an alias to the renamed note
2. Preserves the backlinks to the renamed note that were using previous title as a display text.

Demo vault

A demo vault with usage examples ships with every release. You can access it via any of the following:

1. Running the Smart Rename: Open demo vault command.
2. Downloading smart-rename-demo-vault-<version>.zip (<version> is the release version) from the Releases.
3. Browsing its source in demo-vault/ in this repository.

Detailed explanation

Step 1

You have

OldName.md:

This is a note `OldName.md` that is going to be renamed to `NewName.md`.

OtherNote.md:

This note references

1. Wikilink [[OldName]]
2. Wikilink with the same display text [[OldName|OldName]]
3. Wikilink with a custom display text [[OldName|Custom display text]]
4. Markdown link [OldName](OldName.md)
5. Markdown link with a custom display text [Custom display text](OldName.md)

Step 2

You invoke current plugin providing NewName as a new title

Step 3

Now you have

NewName.md:

---
aliases:
  - OldName
---

This is a note `OldName.md` that is going to be renamed to `NewName.md`.

OtherNote.md:

This note references

1. Wikilink [[NewName|OldName]]
2. Wikilink with the same display text [[NewName|OldName]]
3. Wikilink with a custom display text [[NewName|Custom display text]]
4. Markdown link [OldName](NewName.md)
5. Markdown link with a custom display text [Custom display text](NewName.md)

Current plugin's aim is to preserve OldName display text in links 1, 2, 4

Installation

The plugin is available in the official Community Plugins repository.

Beta versions

To install the latest beta release of this plugin (regardless if it is available in the official Community Plugins repository or not), follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have the BRAT plugin installed and enabled.
2. Click Install via BRAT.
3. An Obsidian pop-up window should appear. In the window, click the Add plugin button once and wait a few seconds for the plugin to install.

Debugging

By default, debug messages for this plugin are hidden.

To show them, run the following command:

window.DEBUG.enable('smart-rename');

For more details, refer to the documentation.

Support

My other Obsidian resources

See my other Obsidian resources.

License

© Michael Naumov