How to change custom release names in Azure DevOps?

You can't. release name must be a unique name, therefore Azure DevOps requires you to put $(rev:r) in the name, because it's adding a incremental number for each release.

Another option is to use $(Build.BuildNumber) or $(Release.ReleaseId) that are also unique but is not will solve your issue.

In the build Pipeline.

You can customize how your pipeline runs are named/numbered. Ref : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/run-number?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml

In YAML, this property is called name.

Use variables to set your major version, minor version etc and generate the patch version using counter Ref : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/process/expressions?view=azure-devops#counter.

for your case you can set major : V.1 minor : 0 patch : $[counter(format('{0}.{1}', variables['major'], variables['minor']), 1)]

and set the name like name: $(major_version).$(minor_version).$(patch_version)

Release pipeline

Refer to $(Build.BuildNumber) which will ref to the buildpipeline custom name/number set in the build pipeline. You can change this naming scheme by editing the release name format mask. In the Options tab of a release pipeline, edit the Release name format property in the General page. Ref : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/release/?view=azure-devops#how-do-i-manage-the-names-for-new-releases.

You can change the naming scheme by editing the release name format mask.

When specifying the format mask, you can use the pre-defined variables mentioned in this official document or custom variable -- the value of a global configuration property defined in the release pipeline.

But for your issue ,as far as I know, no pre-defined variables can be displayed like V1.0.0 as release name.