# How to rename a tag across all your Flickr photos

URL: https://my-flickr-assistant.monier.tv/guides/rename-a-flickr-tag
Last updated: 2026-09-19

Flickr has no way to rename a tag. Not on the website, not in Organizr, and not in the API: there is no method that says "call this tag something else". Every rename is really two operations on every photo that carries the tag: add the new one, remove the old one. That is what any tool that offers a rename is doing, and on a tag used by a few thousand photos it is worth knowing before you start.

## Steps

### 1. Find every photo that carries the tag

On flickr.com, your Tags page lists each tag with a count. Clicking one shows the photos. In Organizr you can search by tag and select the results a page at a time. Photo Stream Assistant's My Tags shows the same list with counts and opens any tag as a selection of all its photos at once.

### 2. Add the new tag to all of them

In Organizr, select the photos, open Edit Tags in the batch panel and add the new tag; it is applied to the selection. Adding is safe: Flickr's addTags call appends and touches nothing else. If the new tag already exists on some photos, they simply keep it.

### 3. Remove the old tag from all of them

Still in Organizr with the same selection, remove the old tag. Do this second, so that at no point are the photos carrying neither tag. On a large tag, Organizr's page-at-a-time selection makes this the slow part.

### 4. Or let an app do both, photo by photo

Photo Stream Assistant's rename dialog does exactly the two steps above for every photo in one run, and shows the count before the button: "439 photos carry this tag". It states plainly that Flickr has no rename, that each photo is edited in turn, and that the app cannot undo it. The free version handles 10 photos per run; the one-time Pro Unlock removes the limit.

### 5. Check the machine tags survived

Machine tags, the ones like geo:lat=48.85, live alongside normal tags. A tool that renames by replacing a photo's whole tag list would destroy them. Any tool worth using adds and removes single tags instead of rewriting the list; if you are unsure, compare one photo before and after.

## Questions

### Why does Flickr not have a rename?

Nobody outside Flickr knows. The API has had addTags, setTags and removeTag for many years and nothing else, and the website exposes the same three operations under different names.

### Can a rename be undone?

Only by running it in reverse: add the old tag back, remove the new one. Nothing records the rename, so if two tags were merged into one there is no record of which photos had which. Export or note the affected photo list before a large rename.

### Is merging two tags the same thing?

Yes. Renaming tag A to an existing tag B is a merge: every photo with A gains B and loses A, and the ones that already had B keep it. Photo Stream Assistant treats typing an existing tag as the new name as exactly that.

## In the app

- [Flickr Tag Manager](https://my-flickr-assistant.monier.tv/flickr-tag-manager)
- [Flickr Metadata Editor](https://my-flickr-assistant.monier.tv/flickr-metadata-editor)

Written by Stéphane Monier for Photo Stream Assistant. Photo Stream Assistant is an independent app, not affiliated with Flickr or SmugMug.