Filename Cleaner

Different systems forbid different characters. Windows rejects < > : " / \ | ? * and control characters, reserves names like CON, NUL, and COM1, and disallows trailing dots or spaces. The web has its own restrictions (special characters like ? & # break URLs). Cleaning normalizes names so they work everywhere.

By default, OS-invalid characters (< > : " / \ | ? * and control characters) are replaced with a dash, web-breaking characters (# % & { }) are removed for URL safety, and dots/spaces at the very start or end are trimmed. You can switch the replacement to an underscore, remove invalid characters entirely, and independently control how spaces are handled.

It converts accented characters to their plain ASCII equivalents — café becomes cafe, naïve becomes naive. This keeps filenames compatible with legacy systems, FTP tools, and URL links that mishandle non-ASCII characters.

Names like CON.txt, NUL, PRN, AUX, and COM1–COM9/LPT1–LPT9 cannot be created on Windows. When the option is enabled, the tool appends an underscore (for example CON_ .txt) so the file becomes creatable.

No. This is a preview tool — it only shows what the cleaned names would look like. Copy the result or download the .txt list, then use your file manager or a batch-rename utility to apply the changes.

Yes. All transformations run in your browser with no network requests, so the tool is fully offline and your filenames are never transmitted anywhere.