Essential freeware for the Mac user
Just purchased a brand new Apple Macintosh? Try out these must have free software on your machine.
Security
1. ClamXav - Antivirus (so that a virus is not transmitted to windows users)
Internet
1. Mozilla Firefox / Camino / Shira Browser - Safari is great. But there will be some sites which will not render properly in it (Shira uses Safari engine to render pages but has loads of other features)
2. Mozilla Thunderbird / GyzaMail
Junk Matcher - Spam filter for Mail.app
MailTags - Adds tagging facility to emails which can be indexed by spotlight
Mail Act On - Map specific mail rules or actions "Act-On" keys
3. NetNewsWire Lite / NewsMac - Safari's RSS function is good, but some may want a separate RSS Reader.
4. Internet Chat Programs - Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Adium / Fire ( 1 program to chat on all networks). Mercury Messenger is an alternative to MSN Messenger with extra features.
5. Skype / Gizmo Project - Internet Telephony
6. HTTPmail plugin for Apple Mail - (for downloading email from Hotmail)
7. Delicious to Safari - Download your Delicious bookmarks to Safari
8. CyberDuck / Fugu / One Button - FTP Clients
9. Sogudi - Configure shortcuts in Safari
10. Google Toolbar for Firefox
11. Azureus Java BitTorrent Client, Tomato Torrent / Limewire / XFactor
12. SiteSucker - Download websites from the net
13. Colloquy / Conversation - IRC Clients
Multimedia
1. Audiorecorder - Audio recording software
2. Audacity - Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
3. Video Players - Windows Media Player, Real Player
VLC Player / MPlayer - Play most audio and video files.
Bitplayer - Quicktime compatible player which gives extra features as full window viewing, playlists, exporting to a variety of formats and more
4. Imagewell / Imagetricks / Live Quartz - Small, lightweight image editing application ( Imagetricks & Live Quartz use Apple Core Image Technology)
5. Gimp - Image editing software similiar to Adobe Photoshop
GimpShop - Hacked version of Gimp which closely resembles Photoshop
Seashore - Cocoa image editor based on Gimp
6. Artrage - Simulated canvas painting
7. Handbrake - DVD to MPEG-4 ripper / converter
8. MacTheRipper - DVD Extractor
9. TuxPaint - Painting program for Kids
10. DVD Manager / DVD Juggler / Matinee - Movie / DVD Organizer
11. Radio Recorder
12. XnView - View and convert graphic files
13. JetPhoto Studio - Digital photo organizer software with Web publishing platform
Productivity
1. NeoOffice - Alternative to MS Office (AbiWord Cocoa Version is a standalone Word processing program)
2. Sidenote / iSnip - To manage text snippets
3. Nvu - Complete Web Authoring System
4. VoodoPad Lite / Deep Notes - Note taking application
5. PDFLab - Joins multiple pdf files into one
6. SubEthaEdit - Collaborative Text Editor with the power of bonjour
7. Text Wrangler / Taco HTML Edit / Smultron - TextEdit Replacement
8. BlogAssist - Convert text to HTML
9. Nisus Thesaurus (For Mac OSX 10.3 or less. V10.4 has inbuilt system wide dictionary)
10. Free Mind - Mind mapping software
Utilities
1. Growl - System wide notification software
2. Onyx - System maintainance
3. Pacifist - Extract .pkg files (individual programs) from the Installer Disc
4. Tofu - makes text easy to read by splitting into columns
5. iBackup / SilverKeeper - Backup programs
6. Quicksilver / Butler - Application launcher with numerous other uses (Quicksilver with Sogudi plugin is an unbeatable combination)
Namely - A Lean mean application launcher and nothing else (<300kb) style="font-style: italic;">7. Yahoo Widgets aka Konfabulator (For Mac OSX 10.3 or less. V10.4 has Dashboard)
8. Gemini - Utility for file copying, Mirroring and folder synchronization
9. Rawr-jour - Bonjour service browser with Growl support
10. Teleport / Synergy - Use a single mouse and keyboard to contol multiple computers (Synergy works on all OS's, Teleport works only on Mac's)
11. Paparazzi! - Utility to take screenshots of webpages
12. Carbon Copy Cloner - Make a bootable disk of your hard drive
13. Unison - File synchronization tool for Mac / Win / Linux
14. coconutBattery - Live feedback of whats going on with your battery
Update - Thanks for everyones excellent comments esp - Tim, daboo, Alec, boult.
Security
1. ClamXav - Antivirus (so that a virus is not transmitted to windows users)
Internet
1. Mozilla Firefox / Camino / Shira Browser - Safari is great. But there will be some sites which will not render properly in it (Shira uses Safari engine to render pages but has loads of other features)
2. Mozilla Thunderbird / GyzaMail
Junk Matcher - Spam filter for Mail.app
MailTags - Adds tagging facility to emails which can be indexed by spotlight
Mail Act On - Map specific mail rules or actions "Act-On" keys
3. NetNewsWire Lite / NewsMac - Safari's RSS function is good, but some may want a separate RSS Reader.
4. Internet Chat Programs - Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, Adium / Fire ( 1 program to chat on all networks). Mercury Messenger is an alternative to MSN Messenger with extra features.
5. Skype / Gizmo Project - Internet Telephony
6. HTTPmail plugin for Apple Mail - (for downloading email from Hotmail)
7. Delicious to Safari - Download your Delicious bookmarks to Safari
8. CyberDuck / Fugu / One Button - FTP Clients
9. Sogudi - Configure shortcuts in Safari
10. Google Toolbar for Firefox
11. Azureus Java BitTorrent Client, Tomato Torrent / Limewire / XFactor
12. SiteSucker - Download websites from the net
13. Colloquy / Conversation - IRC Clients
Multimedia
1. Audiorecorder - Audio recording software
2. Audacity - Free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.
3. Video Players - Windows Media Player, Real Player
VLC Player / MPlayer - Play most audio and video files.
Bitplayer - Quicktime compatible player which gives extra features as full window viewing, playlists, exporting to a variety of formats and more
4. Imagewell / Imagetricks / Live Quartz - Small, lightweight image editing application ( Imagetricks & Live Quartz use Apple Core Image Technology)
5. Gimp - Image editing software similiar to Adobe Photoshop
GimpShop - Hacked version of Gimp which closely resembles Photoshop
Seashore - Cocoa image editor based on Gimp
6. Artrage - Simulated canvas painting
7. Handbrake - DVD to MPEG-4 ripper / converter
8. MacTheRipper - DVD Extractor
9. TuxPaint - Painting program for Kids
10. DVD Manager / DVD Juggler / Matinee - Movie / DVD Organizer
11. Radio Recorder
12. XnView - View and convert graphic files
13. JetPhoto Studio - Digital photo organizer software with Web publishing platform
Productivity
1. NeoOffice - Alternative to MS Office (AbiWord Cocoa Version is a standalone Word processing program)
2. Sidenote / iSnip - To manage text snippets
3. Nvu - Complete Web Authoring System
4. VoodoPad Lite / Deep Notes - Note taking application
5. PDFLab - Joins multiple pdf files into one
6. SubEthaEdit - Collaborative Text Editor with the power of bonjour
7. Text Wrangler / Taco HTML Edit / Smultron - TextEdit Replacement
8. BlogAssist - Convert text to HTML
9. Nisus Thesaurus (For Mac OSX 10.3 or less. V10.4 has inbuilt system wide dictionary)
10. Free Mind - Mind mapping software
Utilities
1. Growl - System wide notification software
2. Onyx - System maintainance
3. Pacifist - Extract .pkg files (individual programs) from the Installer Disc
4. Tofu - makes text easy to read by splitting into columns
5. iBackup / SilverKeeper - Backup programs
6. Quicksilver / Butler - Application launcher with numerous other uses (Quicksilver with Sogudi plugin is an unbeatable combination)
Namely - A Lean mean application launcher and nothing else (<300kb) style="font-style: italic;">7. Yahoo Widgets aka Konfabulator (For Mac OSX 10.3 or less. V10.4 has Dashboard)
8. Gemini - Utility for file copying, Mirroring and folder synchronization
9. Rawr-jour - Bonjour service browser with Growl support
10. Teleport / Synergy - Use a single mouse and keyboard to contol multiple computers (Synergy works on all OS's, Teleport works only on Mac's)
11. Paparazzi! - Utility to take screenshots of webpages
12. Carbon Copy Cloner - Make a bootable disk of your hard drive
13. Unison - File synchronization tool for Mac / Win / Linux
14. coconutBattery - Live feedback of whats going on with your battery
Update - Thanks for everyones excellent comments esp - Tim, daboo, Alec, boult.
posted by Sudeep Bansal at 4:27 PM
48 Comments:
You might add OpenOffice.org to that list.
http://schwehr.org/software/Darwin/macosx-install-10.3.html - go down a page for free applications. rough, but some handy applications
-kurt
For text editors, I also recommend Smultron. Simple, light-weight, and has pretty good syntax highlighting. I use it.
Thanks a million. I was looking for a PDFLab type program everywhere on the web.. I found a lot.. most stunk..
Good List!
If you are going to post a list like this please get all your links right... the quicksilver link goes to quiksilver.com the clothing comapany here is the real link http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
Jeremy suggests OpenOffice.org. Good call, but it happens that the recommendation for NeoOffice J covers that. NeoOffice J is the port of OpenOffice to an Aqua interface. It tracks the current release of OpenOffice surprisingly closely, considering how much work it is to convert from X to Aqua, and it is slicker than a greased weasel.
Very glad to see you added Tomato Torrent to the list. Azureus is bloated as hell ...this java app sucks big time.
Tomato on the other hand is fast and light, and mac native.
I think Neooffice is too bloated. It takes forever to load. For my needs (which are not terribly advanced), Appleworks is perfect.
Paparazzi is good for making browser screenshots.
Limewire is a must-have. So is the official Bittorrent client.
BBedit and Transmit, if you can get them.
(Psst... which brings me to Serialseeker -- also a must-have. You didn't hear it from me...)
Don't forget Konfabulator for desktop widgets you can actually put on your desktop.
oops, it's on the list, but Konfabulator still rocks.
If you're a bit more advanced into web development, you need MAMP. Seriously.
And whether or not you're into web development, you need Diablotin and Tinkertool too.
Thanks Tim
Updated the list to include Paparazzi and Limewire.
btw BBEEdit and Transmit are not freeware.
BBEEdit Lite was free but they changed the name to Text Wrangler
If u have used the official BitTorrent client, give Tomato torrent a try. Its lightweight, fast and does a fine job.
Synergy should be on that list. Open source, cross platform, gotta love it.
http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/
Also, you should list Filezilla (filezilla.sourceforge.net) under FTP.
CDeX is a great audio ripper (http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/) and Bitspirit is a great Torrent client (http://www.lanspirit.com/bitspirit/index2.htm).
Miranda is a great IM client for multiple networks (http://www.miranda-im.org/) as is Trillian (http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/).
Freemind is a nice mind mapper (freemind.sourceforge.net).
Maxthon is a decent IE-based browser (www.maxthon.com).
Wordweb is a good free dictionary (http://wordweb.info/free/)
Winamp is a good free player (www.winamp.com).
Ipodder is a free and highly recommended Podcast client (http://ipodder.sourceforge.net/)
iOn TV grabs video feeds from the web for you (http://openvision.tv/)
Pacifist is a shareware application. It mentions that in the first sentence of its description!
Yes. Pacifist is a shareware. It has a 15 sec nag screen but is fully functiional after that.
The importance of this software comes when a preinstalled Mac OS X application is accidently deleted. This is the only way to reinstall the deleted application without reinstalling the whole OS.
I discovered this application the hard way by accidently deleting iChat.
Pacifist extracted the ichat.pkg file from the installer disc and installed the ichat app.
btw does anybody know of a free cd burning app for Mac with decent set of features as multisession burn, video disc burn, hybrid disc burn(eg mp3+data, video disc+data etc) and other such features found in some windows freeware
S, great work man. Congrats. People are ragging this and that, but you've put together what you have found, it works for you-- bang, nice.
Keep it up!
OneButton is a great opensource ftp-app.. it's still in beta though..
"Wordweb is a good free dictionary."
That might be true - but it's for Windoz only.
Great list. You may want to add GIMPShop vs. Gimp, which is a good mod to GIMP to make it a bit more familiar and user-friendly.
http://plasticbugs.com/index.php?p=241
Another great BitTorrent client that's native to OSX is Bits On Wheels.
By the way, anyone know of a good FTP client that has speed (both up and down) limiting? I've gone through every client I can find and even the $40 FTP clients don't have it. Lame!
OSeX is a great substitution for Mac the Ripper. mpgtx is a handy mpeg demux/split/join tool.
And don't forget your AJAX personal bookmarks springboard
http://colloquy.info/
Nice IRC / SILC Chat Client. Free and Open Source.
This is a very good list, with some items that are new to me. I would suggest adding Desktop Manager, for multiple desktops. Stable versions from Jaguar to Tiger.
(desktopmanager.berlios.de)
Also Celestia for astronomy, Meteorologist for menubar weather, and Vidi for bringing video feed to desktop via firewire.
We are truly enriched by the work of all these brilliant programmers and artists.
I'm surprised Carbon Copy Cloner hasn't been mentioned.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Unison is a great newsreader for Mac it groups files when downloading awesome features..
I've got my list of "essential" OS X applications here:
http://weblog.mrbill.net/essential-mac-software/
Thanks. Very nice.
Some more recommendations:
Xfactor, a great p2p client;
and
WireTap, for recording streaming audio or other audio on your mac. They want you to pay for it, but after a short nag screen you can use it almost fully (the only thing I've found that you can't do is record straight to mp3, but you can just convert it to mp3 in itunes anyway).
thanks for the list great job!!
Wow, I can't believe I actually have one that you missed. Sitesucker. Does exactly what it says, slurps the site files off any URL. http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11634
There's also Proce55ing: great programatic visual app
Here's list of freeware apps I installed on my mac running Tiger (and was useful in Panther)
aMSN ( http://www.cmq.qc.ca/4w/amsn/ ) or Mercury Messenger ( http://www.mercury.to/ )
Chicken of the VNC ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/networking_security/chickenofthevnc.html )
ChitChat X ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/email_chat/chitchatx.html )
Chmox ( http://chmox.sourceforge.net/ )
CocoaMySQL ( http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/ but I used the one from http://www.theonline.org/cocoamysql/ to work in Tiger ) the development for this app is dead at 0.5 but the alternative site is continuing but YourSQL may replace this app as choice so who knows here you go: http://yoursql.ludit.it/index.html found it via: http://justinfrench.com/index.php?id=108 (oddly, I just tried CocoaMySQL just now (the latest sbg version) and it fails and now removed it and installed YourSQL
however official MySQL product is MySQL Administrator which is also a freeware:
http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/index.html I do have that installed as well and do use it.
Comic Book Viewer ( http://gumby.misplacedmac.com/ ) to view Comic Book in CBZ/CBR format (which I prefer over Comical http://comical.sourceforge.net/ )
Conversation ( http://homepage.mac.com/philrobin/conversation/ ) preferred over Colloquy ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/email_chat/colloquy.html )
one mentioned that Wordweb is win only so...
Omnidictionary ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/home_learning/omnidictionary.html ) good for Panther users since Tiger already has one built in and
MacDict ( http://www.bainsware.com/macdict/ )
eFax ( www.efax.com) a freeware app for eFax memeber
Fetch Art ( http://members.cox.net/afriesen/fetchart/index.html )
One asked about free cd burning app.. why not check DiscBlaze ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/discblaze.html ) I don't have that installed because I use Tiger's built in Burner app via Disc Utility :D
HexEdit ( http://hexedit.sourceforge.net/ )
iJournal freeware LiveJournal client ( http://ijournal.os10.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page )
Inkscape ( http://www.inkscape.org/ )
There's another player to Skype/Gizmo scene is;
ineen ( http://www.ineen.com/ ) it's freeware!
jahshaka a world's first open-source real time editing and effects system
( http://www.jahshaka.org/ )
JunkMatcher with Mail.app, you can fight Spams!
( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/email_chat/junkmatcher.html )
ManOpen ( http://www.clindberg.org/projects/ManOpen.html )
Matinee ( http://matinee.dizandat.com/ )
MT-NewsWatcher 3.4 ( http://www.smfr.org/mtnw/ ) that one is freeware while Unison isn't
ohphoneX ( http://xmeeting.sourceforge.net/ )
Simple CSS ( http://www.hostm.com/css/ )
SnapperHead ( http://www.bainsware.com/snapperhead/ ) and Spy ( http://www.silvernetworks.net/spy/ ) are basically same thing but each has different features.
VChat ( a freeware cuseeme client http://vchat.cu-seeme.org/ )
xACT ( http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14246 )
keep an eye on http://www.freemacware.com
They seem to find good freeware. And they have an RSS feed.
Amazing, Thanks so much for this!
You missed a few- Xchat Aqua, Bits on Wheels, BZFlag(open source 3D tank game), Camino, Poisoned, Proteus(ShareWare but no limitations).
Niles
To the person who suggested OpenOffice, technically the blogger did mention it already.
NeOffice/J is actually a Java version of OpenOffice and is in fact based on a later version of OpenOffice than the Mac version of OpenOffice.
Great list, thanks for putting it together.
Let me recommend Sente, the incredible tool for organizeing pdf's and referencdes (endNote for mac, only much better).
And no, I am not affiliated with them, it just changed the way I work.
http://www.thirdstreetsoftware.com/
You'll need to wade through all the program descriptions to find the freeware. Lots of good stuff.
http://www.pure-mac.com
Found this CD burning program from www.pure-mac.com
FireStarter FX at http://www.projectomega.org/
RNSplicer is a tool that enables remote access to Bonjour services such as iPhoto libraries and iTunes music.
http://www.jaist.ac.jp/~t-mizuka/rns/index-e.html
aMSN
compiled for mac osx
tested! webcam working!
custom emoticons, winks.
try it.
http://koti.mbnet.fi/website/amsn/
http://journler.phildow.net/
Free great daily journal software.
Transmission is a lovely torrent client. I think I'm in love actually....
Hi,
This article is good and informative.
Software Development Company
Free Directory
Great list! TY.
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