The plugins tab in KRename has a dozen options, only four of which could be enabled on my system. I found no information on now to enable a specific plugin (for me, exiv2). I have exiv2 installed on my system, but no luck. More information should be available on the plugin page on how to enable/disable specific plugins.
Some plugins are enabled by default. If krename was built with support for exiv2 the exiv2 plugin is enabled by default and one can't disable it. The checkbox disable, i.e. it is grayed out, but it's actually checked. I agree that this might be confusing but can you confirm that that's the case for you? Unfortunately I don't really know why the decision to have plugins, which are enabled by default can't be disabled, was made in the past. However, I'm leaning to changing this.
Git commit b721366896023bc7ca1294fd8bfd955803fc6b8c by Heiko Becker. Committed on 02/09/2019 at 06:01. Pushed by heikobecker into branch 'master'. Don't enable plugins with no chance to disable them Admittedly I don't know the motivation behind the current situation, but if an UI is provided to enable/disable plugins it seems a bit inconsisten to hard enable some plugins with no possibility for the user to disable them. This might even be confusing because users might take the disabled checkbox (even though it's checked) as an indication that the plugin can't be enabled. To avoid this, have plugins enabled by default instead of always enabled. M +2 -2 src/datetimeplugin.h M +1 -1 src/dirsortplugin.cpp M +1 -1 src/dirsortplugin.h M +2 -2 src/fileplugin.h M +2 -2 src/increasecounterplugin.h M +3 -3 src/krenamewindow.cpp M +2 -2 src/permissionsplugin.h M +2 -4 src/plugin.h M +2 -2 src/scriptplugin.h https://commits.kde.org/krename/b721366896023bc7ca1294fd8bfd955803fc6b8c