Limitations On Naming USB Sticks & Files ?

[Robert4]

Hello,

Running Sonoma on a mac desktop of a few years age.

Seems like something has changed regarding naming, or re-naming, of
USB Sticks, and also basic files.

The number of letters in the name seems very limited (now).
Also, what punctuation marks it will accept.

It never was this restricted (I think).

What are the rules for naming, as you folks understand
them to be ?

Have they changed ?

Any "caveats" to re-naming items ?

Thanks,
Bob

 

[chabig]

Names are only limited by the file system you’re using. So it depends on how you formatted the drive.

 

[gilby101]

Small USB sticks may come formatted as FAT16 which uses the MS-DOS 8.3 file naming. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table. You can reformat in Disk Utility as either exFAT or APFS - that will give you more freedom in naming.