OS X Software List (freeware)

It was time to consolidate the previous thread into one to make it a little easier to navigate. I figured I'd start a list and update it as we go along. There are tons of different software out there for OS X, but hopefully we can do our best to just list the more common/popular ones. Having a gigantic list of every software for OS X would just be too big and confusing. Plus, there's VersionTracker for that. The point of this is just to help out folks new to OS X find software. Anyways, this list is by no means final or even formatted in the most user friendly manner, so please post any applications you recommend as well as suggestions to make this more organized. Thanks!
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Freeware

Bittorrent
Transmission - Lightweight, multiplatform, Bittorrent client.
Azureus - Multiplatform, java based Bittorrent client loaded with features.

Browsers
Camino - Based off the Gecko (Mozilla) rendering engine. Best put, Mozilla Power, Mac Style.
Firefox - Very popular browser based off the Gecko rendering engine. Not as integrated with OS X, however.
Shiira - Based on Web Kit and written in Cocoa.
Opera - Another web browser, need a better description!
Google Browser Sync for FireFox - Allows syncing browser information across multiple computers.
BookIt - Transfer bookmarks between various browsers.
Inquisitor - Spotlight for the web (Safari only).

Compression Tools
UnRarX - Software to open RAR files.
StuffIt Expander - Expands a number of different formats, including RAR.
SimplyRAR - For creating RARs.

Email
Thunderbird - Feature filled email client.

File Sharing/P2P
Cabos - Gnutella file sharing program based on LimeWire and Acquisition.
Frostwire - Similar to Limeware but better.

FTP/SSH Clients
Cyberduck - Open source FTP/SFTP client which integrates nicely with OS X.
OneButton FTP - Another FTP client.
Fugu - Cocoa frontend for OpenSSH's sftp/scp clients.

Messaging/Chat Related
Adium - Works with a number of different protocols in one application.
Chax - iChat improvements, such as tabs.
Colloquy - An IRC, SILC & ICB client.

Multimedia Players
VideoLAN - Multiplatform media player capable of playing virtually anything you throw at it.
MPlayer - Another multiplatform media player compatbile with almost everything.
Miro - Multiplatform media player with video RSS feed, YouTube support, and much more.
Nice Player - Yet another media player that will play almost anything.
Centerstage - Full screen media playback (think Front Row).
Cog - Multi format music player with a very light UI.

Multimedia Related
HandBrake - Multiplatform DVD to MPEG-4 converter.
ByteController - Adds forward, previous, and play/pause buttons for iTunes to the menu bar.
You Control Tunes - Another iTunes menu bar controller.
The Filter - iTunes playlist auto-generator.
Perian - Adds additional Quicktime (and Nice Player) playback support for various media types.
Flip4Mac - Adds WMV playback support to QuickTime.
Jaikoz Audio Tagger - Automatically finds song ID tags.

Network Related
MarcoPolo - Rule based network location tool, great for switching between home and work networks.
iStumbler - Great tool for finding wireless networks.

OS X Customization/Enhancements
Clear Dock - Ability to change your docks color or make it clear.
VirtueDesktops - Ability to have multiple desktops, like Spaces in Leopard.
Growl - Adds customizable popup notifications to applications.
TinkerTool - Gives you access to various hidden OS X options.
Uno - Gives OS X a unified look.
Caffeine - Prevents your computer from going to sleep, screen dimming, and screen saver in one easy click.

System Monitoring & Fan Control
iStat - Very useful tool for providing system information as a widget or application.
Temperature Monitor - Menu bar utility showing temperature in a drop down.
smcFanControl - Tool to control your fan speeds.
Amnesia - System monitoring tool.

Text/Office Related
NeoOffice - Complete office suite ported over from OpenOffice.
TextWrangler - Text editing software useful for coding or editing configuration type files.
Smultron - Another piece of software for text editing with syntax coloring and much more.

Misc
Quicksilver - A unified, extensible interface for working with
applications, contacts, music, and other data.
Butler - Similar to Quicksilver.
AppleJack - Very useful tool for troubleshooting OS X. Runs in single-user mode.
AppDelete - Uninstaller that removes most files associated with the program.
Synergy - Ability to use one keyboard and mouse seamlessly on multiple computers and operating systems without special hardware.
MainMenu - Easy way to force run maintenence scripts.
Iris - iSight program which does things like movies, motion detection, etc.
Meteo - Menu bar application that shows weather quickly.
TranslateIt - A cool little translator.
Disable Dashboard - Disable the Dashboard completely.
Jing - Image and Video capture. Short videos, but it's a free alternative to Snapz Pro.
Maintenance - A simple Automator Action fused with AppleScript aimed at keeping your Mac running healthy.
Warp - Add keyboard control to Spaces.
Connect360 - Stream videos off your Mac to your XBox 360.
Nestopia - NES emulator.

 

Great list! I recommend adding IStat Pro widget... you can get it right off www.apple.com It's great for monitoring temperature, fan speeds, memory / cpu usage and much more! Runs in C and F temperatures depending on country to!

 

Hey Durious,

I wasn't sure what to do with widgets. I definitely agree iStat is almost a must have for any OS X user (I use it as well), but was thinking of maybe having another thread for that since there are so many different widgets, Either that or just create a section on here for widgets and just list some of the most popular/useful ones. What do you think?

 

Great work, Eluzion . And I agree, add iStat Pro, its widely used and very useful. And actually, its not only a widget, there's also an application form of iStat Pro.

 

Yay, thanks eluzion.

Bitorrent-
Azureus - unlike Transmission, this isn't banned from servers as often, and has more features. More bloated though.

Browser-
I'd say OmniWeb is amazing. It has everything a web browser should be and more. My favorite browser hands down. However, it's not "freeware" per se - so...not sure if it belongs in the list (or change the list title?)

Maybe add a category in there for organizer/notetaker, since there are a lot of OSX apps for that?
I use CP Notebook, but it's not "freeware".

 

i am a fan of the stuffit expander instead of unrarx,

and i like istumbler to find wifi signals.

 

Ah, well I think it would be best to get a list of strictly freeware stuff, and make another list for shareware/pay software.

I'm just sort of throwing in stuff you guys are recommending as you post them. Once we get a nice list of freeware, it will be easier to categorize them I think.

 

for messaging you might want to add fire. i have it and use it sometimes its not a bad app.

 

Hey stealthsniper,

From looking at their website, it looks like they stopped developing it back in February? I could definitely add it but I was thinking of having a list of freeware software that is actively supported. But anyways, up to you guys! Just an idea.

 

yeah toss out omni web, its not freeware, or at least make a note of that in the description.

quicksilver isn't really freeware either, but it basically is...

keep it active software, unless its magically timeless (unlikely)

 

Let's see, in no particular order

Application Update (widget)

Thunderbird

Don't forget RAR - I actually think this original command line utility is best out of the main options. Unarchiver runs into problems with larger files, Stuffit has a whole range of problems in OSX, etc.

If you're into simple picture viewing (manga, comics, etc.), FFView is great (discontinued, but still the best to this date), SimpleComic is another option (newer, regularly updated, just not as feature-full as FFView).

SuperCal to calibrate the screen...

GrandPerspective to graphically view your HD usage.

Also, Boot Camp is still technically free(beta)ware. NTFS-3g is free, as is MacFuse.

Fink and etc. are all free too.

Colloquy for IRC...

Some people swear by Steermouse also

 

hmm. i had no idea. i thot it was supported back like 3 weeks ago when i downloaded it but maybe not.

 

This should really be sticked, great job!

Let me add another few must have's in my book:

Butler - very much like Quicksilver, but offers a ton of control that Quicksilver doesn't

Temperature Monitor - menubar utility shows all the temperature sensors as a pull down menu

Meteo - menubar app that does a great job of showing the weather quick.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox - actually cross-platform but helps me keep my sanity across several computers. The reason I use Firefox over other browsers.

 

You know...I'm actually curious about Butler and the whole which launcher app is the best debate you should start out a thread summarizing a comparison of QS vs Butler

 

Sure you won't call me a post-geek?

 

Psh, that's my title!

By the way shomann, would you mind editing that post to get rid of that word that I also edited out in my quote? Its not exactly a family-friendly word , and NBR is meant to be family-friendly.

 

Not a problem, sorry about that - used to my car site being full of potty-mouths

 

Eluzion, I'll be referencing and linking to this thread in the in-progress Mac Switcher's Guide sticky. Hope you don't mind , and of course you'll be credited for it.

 

Sure!....but only if you add LaunchBar to the list to be compared

 

Here's a few more.
Caffeine : stops your laptop from sleeping with one easy click
MainMenu : easy way to force run maintainence scripts
MarcoPolo : Rule based network location tool, great for auto switching between home and work
You control tunes : Nice menubar program for controlling itunes.
Uno : give mac a unified gui !
The filter : iTunes playlist auto-generator
Iris: iSight program, does some cool stuff, movies, photos, Motion Detection, etc etc
NicePlayer: Another mediaplayer, will play almost everything and has a v.nice look!
And finally for fellow scientists out there iRNA, Papers, 4peaks, EnzymeX and others can be found here http://mekentosj.com/

a

 

here a pretty simple one called TranslateIt. i think the name kind of explains what it does but if you cant tell it translates words. any students taking a foreing language might appreciate that, i know i sure will once i start taking spanish.

 

I have one that is already on your Mac: Automator. It is great! Gives a drag and drop GUI for AppleScript.

And Quicksilver is very powerful once you start adding plugins. You can control pretty much everything from Quicksilver, it is so much more than an app launcher.

 

Of course! I don't need credit, it's you guys that are posting all the applications. I'm just throwing them to the list as we go along.

I just updated the thread again. Still trying to better organize it. Been a bit busy moving the past few days (still in the process) so might take a day or two to get around to checking this thread.

 

Nice Eluzion

One quick note about Perian - it works with Niceplayer too

 

Not sure if these sites have been added to this post yet - but here's a great list of apps:

http://osx.iusethis.com/top

 

Just want to make sure this doesn't get lost. Can we sticky it by any chance?

 

Cashmonee like to minimize the amount of stickies on the Apple forum...so I don't think he'll want to add in yet another sticky. I've linked to this list multiple times in the upcoming Mac Switcher's Guide though.

 

Eluzion, maybe you should add a Screensaver section into the OS X Freeware list.

This site has a listing of a few free screensavers, and they're real cool. I'm using the Snowfall one right now. And you can add more onto the list later on.

Just a suggestion.

 

why not just put it in ur sig?

 

I'd like to add in Amnesia to the system monitoring tools. It runs in the dock so all you have to do is scroll over it to see your system at a glance.

Also, Stop Dashboard is really handy for those of us who notice how much dashboard uses up your system.

 

Bump back to the top of the page, for the new members who haven't seen this excellent thread yet .

 

It would be nice if we stickied one of these. Inevitably i go looking for one of these to see if there is something to suit my needs...

 

Well, cashmonee said that he didn't want too many stickies on the Apple forum, that's why this was never stickied. If any of you were around when ASUS had five stickies, then you know what I mean .

I did add this thread to the Recommended Guides & Links list on the Mac Switcher's Guide, though. So if you ever need to find it, you can find it through there .

 

Here is my attempt to contribute to this thread with some "must have" Dashboard Widgets. Just click the blue text for direct links.

Screenshot Plus
Allows you to do easy screen captures in a variety of formats. Do one-click full screens, drag the mouse to grab portions of the screen, even capture windows, icons or other widgets. Captures can be saved straight to the desktop, the clipboard, to any user-specified directory and they can even be imported directly to Adobe Photoshop. Captures may be formatted as: png, tiff, jpg, jp2, pdf, gif, bmp or pict.

Sleep Display
IMMEDIATELY puts your iMac’s display to sleep, allowing other programs to continue running, without permanently changing your energy settings.

Deep Sleep
Allows users to put their computer into hibernation mode, also sometimes called software suspend mode. This widget only works on a limited number of Apple computer models. Please read the included documentation for more details.

 

For a new Mac user, it's as though I've been given Manna!

Thanks, Eluzion!

 

bump for new mac users! Keep this thread alive, and suggest more freewares.

 

Yes, excellent work. Unfortunately, it seems Eluzion isn't online very often, so it may be hard to keep the original post updated .

 

hi.. what there some good xml viewer/editors in mac?

i've used altova xml spy on the windows side.. but it seems like altova's solution for mac os is to run the windows version in a virtual pc..

thanks

 

Thought I'd throw a few more suggestions into the ring:

Cog: Multi format music player. Very light ui. Everything works perfectly. One exceptionally nice feature is cntrl+command+n for next, cntrl+command+p for previous, without having to have cog as your active app.

Jaikoz Audio Tagger: Compares song statistics to those in its database and determines the correct ****-tags. I'm not entirely sure what all it looks at, but it's gotten all of mine right so far. Does take quite a while with a larger amount of songs(I have nearly 40GB and it got about a third of the way through them overnight).


Fugu: Cocoa frontend for OpenSSH's sftp/scp clients. I use it to connect to the clusters on campus for parallel computing class.


BookIt: Transfer bookmarks between various web browsers. So simple!


Disable Dashboard: Turns your dashboard off completely with this widget. You can re enable it with the included "enable dashboard" app.

Jing: Image and Video capture. Short videos, but it's a free alternative to Snapz Pro.

 

went back into this thread looking for something (google browser sync)

and figured I would throw this site into the mix for some real opensource apps ^_^

http://www.macports.org/

 

FileZilla under ftp for sure!

Maybes would be
Skype - Best way to video chat with pc users
Frostwire - Better than limewire
Seashore - Photo Editor
Mozy - Like .mac but free
Jing - Video screenshots
Google Earch
Camtwist - Add tons of webcam affects.

 

Sorry I haven't been on these forums much. Been real busy with school, work, etc. Just updated the list with some stuff everyone has posted and some new stuff I've found in the past few months. Will try to get around to organizing it a bit better and adding everyones additions later. Gotta wake up in 4 hours so off to bed I go.

 

Whoa, Eluzion's back!

 

Bringing this to the top, as there's been a whole lot of talk about OS X vs Windows programs. I think I'm going to start compiling a list of all the equivalent programs so we can just point people to a single thread.

 

This thread really should be stickied

 

Is Nestopia up here yet?

 

Well, it would probably be stickied for about 2 weeks. We've actually had two threads like this before, they were stickied for a while then unstickied.

Some silly mod thought having more than one sticky cluttered things up

Anyway....

Software Development
Eclipse
Netbeans
Nothing else needed. Grab the appropriate DT's for your language, and you can do anything...
Of course, VIM is included in the command line...

But seriously, Eclipse just rocks. Handles C/C++, Java, PHP, C#, and a ton of other languages. If it doesn't handle one, you can write your own editor (did so for one language already). It's open source community is amazing.
It's the Ubuntu of IDE's.

 

So, you're saying I hate it and nothing ever works?

I agree that eclipse is great for Java, and the "on the fly debugger" is a joy to have, but I can't imagine using it for C/C++. Give me TextWrangler and gnu any day.

I guess that's why I prefer Gentoo over Ubuntu.

 

It's great for C/C++. I'm not as familiar with the CDT as I am with the JDT... but yeah, you get the AST viewer/parser, refactoring (which is a HUGE benefit of Eclipse) and some of the other features.
I really love how I can rename a procedure, and it will auto rename in any file that references that procedure. Super awesome. and how if I start to repeat code, it will extract it and replace the code with references to the new procedure or class.
And would you really want to use textwrangler to work on a project with 100+ files. I don't believe it integrates with source control.

But yeah, last time I used TextWrangler... yeck... dropped it almost immediately for TextMate.

 

SimplyRAR

Just use it to CREATE RAR archives. Stick with UnRarX for extracting.