AE Global Renamer 2

AE Global Renamer 2 runs on a broad range of After Effects releases, from CC 2015 up through the 2026 version. That covers CC 2015, CC 2015.3, CC 2017, CC 2018, CC 2019, and the annual 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 builds. The current release is 2.6.4, updated in November 2025, and its recent changelog notes fixes for license activation connection issues. For the definitive compatibility list, check the developer's page before installing.

AE Global Renamer 2 is listed as free in this catalog, so you can add it to your After Effects setup without a purchase here. Licensing terms can change, and the developer handles activation through their own framework, with recent November 2025 updates addressing license activation connection issues. For current licensing details and any activation requirements, check Lloyd Alvarez's page on the developer's site before downloading. That is the best place to confirm the terms that apply to your situation.

AE Global Renamer 2 includes an option to use Regular Expressions (Regex), which sits alongside its standard find-and-replace controls. You can define unlimited search and replace pairs, add a suffix or prefix, and choose to replace all matches at once or step through items one at a time. There is also an option to only rename duplicates. Together these controls let you handle both simple substitutions and pattern-based renaming across the items the panel supports. Regex mode is toggled as an option, so plain text search remains available too.

AE Global Renamer 2 supports name tokens that insert values automatically as it renames. [layername] inserts the layer name, [layerindex] inserts the layer index, and adding zeroes pads it so [000layerindex] produces 001, 002 and so on. [layercomment] inserts the layer comment, while [layer5name] inserts the name of layer 5, following the [layer#name] pattern for any layer number. [compname] inserts the comp name and [projectname] inserts the project name. You can combine these with incremental numbering and its padding option.

AE Global Renamer 2 renames across many parts of a project: project panel item names, layer names, effect names, text inside text layers, layer and comp markers, expressions, and property names along with their children such as masks, puppet pins and shape layer properties. It also handles render queue footage paths. A 2.6.0 update added the option to update layer names when renaming text layers, and a later release added the option to skip locked layers, giving you control over which items are affected.