It’s 2025 and Files by Google Still Won’t Let You Rename a File with Just a Capital Letter

Insights At a Glance:

• The Files by Google app still doesn’t allow users to rename files by changing only the capitalization, a surprisingly persistent limitation in 2025.
• Despite a bug report filed in 2023 and marked high-priority in 2025, the issue remains unresolved as of the latest update.

It’s 2025. AI is writing novels, cars are driving themselves (kind of), and yet… I still can’t rename a file from report.pdf to Report.pdf (or vice versa) using the Files by Google app. Make it make sense.

Try changing a filename, and the Files by Google app will look at you like, “That’s literally the same thing.” It refuses to acknowledge the oh-so-subtle but oh-so-important change in letter case. Now, this isn’t just a nitpicky rant about capitalization—okay, maybe it is a little—but for anyone who likes their files neat and tidy (and grammatically correct), this is an annoying little wall to slam into.

Here’s how I discovered it: I wanted to share a PDF, just a simple document, but with a cleaner, more professional filename—first letter capitalized, as it should be. That’s it. Nothing fancy. But my renaming attempts were met with stubborn indifference from the Files by Google app.

Now, I get it. From a file system perspective, filename.pdf and Filename.pdf might as well be the same thing in certain contexts. Technically, the app is not wrong. But when literally every other third-party file manager I tested—File Manager Plus, FX File Manager, CX File Manager, Solid Explorer—handles this with zero drama, you start to wonder why Google’s own app is the odd one out.

Curious, I dug a little deeper and unearthed a bug report on the Google Issue Tracker. Filed back in March 2023, it’s been sitting in the system for a while. The good news? In February 2025, the issue was reassigned with a P2 Priority and an S0 Severity rating. For non-Googlers, that roughly translates to: “Okay, this actually matters.”

But here we are, as of the most recent March 2025 update, and that little quirk is still hanging on. There’s no public ETA on when a fix might roll out. The devs are clearly aware, and with the bumped-up priority and severity, there’s hope this gets ironed out sooner rather than later. Still, it’s wild that in the year of wearables monitoring your sleep and your dreams, we can’t yet rename file.pdf to File.pdf in one of the most-used Android apps.

Don’t get me wrong—the Files by Google app is a solid, no-frills file manager. It’s clean, it’s intuitive, and it’s great for clearing up clutter. But this tiny little renaming hiccup? It’s the digital equivalent of tripping over the last step on an otherwise perfect staircase.

So come on, Google.