The Great Mac OS X Freeware List

We here at MacApper love Mac freeware, and try to write about it whenever we can. If we can find a program that does as good a job as commercial offerings, we will do our best to bring it to your attention. Following along that vein of thought we prepared something we think you guys might find useful. It’s a list of the best and most popular freeware for OS X.

The list is sorted alphabetically by category and currently has 57 freeware mac apps.

We hope to extend this list regularly and make it one of the best places to find out about great freeware for Mac. Having said that we definitely will have missed some of your favorites so please feel free to vote for Mac apps you feel should make the list in the comments.

Audio/Video

Audacity
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. While it is more recommended for advanced users, novices should be able to perform basic editing and recording as well. Useful for podcasters.
iUseThis

Backups

Carbon Copy Cloner
Carbon Copy Cloner is a very useful and robust tool for making exact copy backups of any disk, even across the network. The newest version features an advanced scheduler tool and backup tasks can now be scheduled on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly fashion. If you don’t like Time Machine give CCC a try.
Our Review | iUseThis

Mozy
Mozy is a free online backup service to keep your important files safe. On the free version, you get just 2GB of storage, so may only be any use as part of your backup solution; however for those important documents it’s well worth a look, as you can retrieve your documents from any computer, a definite plus.
Our Review | iUseThis

CD/DVD Authoring

HandBrake
Handbrake is the One-Stop-Shop for ripping DVD’s to your Mac, to use on your iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, or pretty much anything you can think of. A lovely bit of software that nearly everyone will probably need to use at one point or another.
Our Review | iUseThis

Burn
Burn allows you to… burn any kind of CD or DVD, data, music or video. You can even copy or burn ISO and DMG images.
iUseThis

Development

DiffMerge
This a very simple application to compare your files and folders, showing you differences and allowing you to merge them. Very handy for programmers or code monkeys.
iUseThis

Nvu
Nvu is a fully featured web authoring application (WYSIWYG) similiar to something like Dreamweaver that allows you to edit HTML/CSS with no technical expertise or knowledge of either. Well sort of. Nvu is not without its caveats but it is opensource and deserves a spot here.
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Smultron
Smultron is a open sourced text/code editor written in Cocoa that is both easy to use and quite advanced for a freeware offering.
iUseThis

Education

SchoolHouse
GTD is the in-thing at the moment, however most GTD app’s aren’t that great for organising your school life. Schoolhouse, however is, and is perfectly suited to the job. Never miss an assignment again, and know exactly how you’re getting on in each of your subjects.
Our Review | iUseThis

FTP/SFTP Clients

CyberDuck
Cyberduck is a great, simple and very quick FTP/SFTP browser. It lets you do everything you need to, and even lets you edit text documents remotely, without the need to download them. It also takes full advantage of Apple’s Bonjour, and supports full drag and drop.
Our Review | iUseThis

Fugu
Fugu is an opensource SFTP client with a dual pane view distributed by the University of Michigan. Fugu has become fairly robust and supports most of the features you would expect of a solid SFTP app.
iUseThis

Games

* Be sure to also see our article on free games for Mac.

Quinn
Quinn is a nice simple Tetris game, but it has beautiful graphics, as well as some features you rarely see on freeware games, such as Bonjour play, allowing you to play across a network.
Our Review | iUseThis

Graphics

GimpShop
GimpShop is the absolutley free Photoshop clone, which gives you most of Photoshops features, but in an open source package. On the downside, it does run in the X11 environment, however it will do nearly everything Photoshop can do without the massive cost. Great if you only need to do the occasional bit of Photoshop work, and don’t want to shell out the whole amount.
iUseThis

ImageWell
ImageWell is a small, yet quite powerful image editing application that lets you quickly resize, crop, watermark, and edit your images, for use on the web and elsewhere. While the base image editing software is free there is an Extras package which costs $19.95. The freeware version is useful enough we thought it deserved a spot here.
Our Review | iUseThis

Instant Shot
Instant shot is the perfect tool for your screenshot workflow - you can shoot a whole screen, part of a screen, rapid fire and even assign shortcutkeys to create snapshots on the fly.
iUseThis

Resize ‘Em All
This is a brilliant app, and it does what you need it to and very quickly. Useful for resizing photos, especially when you have a whole batch. Although the new finder can perform the same function, this is much quicker, and easier to use, with CoreImage effects just making it all the better.
Our Review | iUseThis

Seashore
Seashore is an amazing image editor, based on the same framework of “GimpShop”. It is, in basic terms, a GIMP based editor, with an OS X Cocoa wrapper. It works like every other OS X app, and is great if you don’t have the time to learn the huge monster, that can be GimpShop.
Our Review | iUseThis

Internet/Web

Adium
Adium is the standard for the multi-network chat client on OS X. It does too many networks to count, and does them well. It is the app of choice for many MSN users, while some AIM users prefer it over iChat; and with Video chat slated to be available soon, it can only get better!
Our Review | iUseThis

aMSN
aMSN is the underdog. It’s not the best at doing MSN, and it does only do MSN, however it does video chat, unlike Adium! A nice app if you need to do video chats on what is one of the most popular networks throughout the UK and much of Europe.
iUseThis

Chicken Of The VNC
Chicken of the VNC is a great VNC to control a remote computer; and now that leopard has VNC built in, it means there is very little setup on the ‘host’ computer. VNC allows you to take control of a remote computer, using your mouse.
Our Review | iUseThis

Colloquy
For Many, IRC is a great way to be part of an online community. It’s used throughout the iPhone hacking teams, as well as on websites like MacHeist; it’s a nice way to talk over the net, or in our case here at MacApper, to organise the next big thing. Colloquy is a must for any IRC user.
Our Review | iUseThis

Flikr Uploadr
Flickr is the photo website, and so many people use it to share their images. But uploading through a website is never easy, so here you have it. Flickr Uploadr an extremely simple uploader that works with both Finder and iPhoto. Why do it any other way?
iUseThis

GarageBuy
You may have used GarageSale, which allows you to sell through eBay with ease. This free Garagebuy allows you to buy on eBay in much the same way, with more ease and in some cases better security than just using the regular site.
Our Review | iUseThis

Google Earth
This is an obvious one, everyone and their grandparents have heard of it, and who hasn’t had a look at their house from the overhead photos? Even better, it now has a flight simulator built in, so you can fly past your neighbourhood, and have a go at landing a plane for yourself!
iUseThis

Joost
Joost is one of the most talked about products of the year, and is one of the first products to bring IP TV to the masses. It’s still in Beta, but it’s getting better all the time! It’s very simple to use, and although the resolutions can often be fairly low, the image quality is high, and it’ll work nicely on your nice 24″ iMac!
iUseThis

Skype
Skype seems to have been adopted as the main standard for free VOIP calls across the internet, and is growing in popularity as an IM client. Of course, it’s free to download, and works great as a video chat client.
iUseThis

Thunderbird
If you don’t get along with Apple’
s mail.app then this is the email client you want. Brought to us by the great people at Mozilla THunderbird allows for advanced email work with IMAP, POP, spam filters, and a plethora of options you would only expect from commercial software.
Our Review | iUseThis

Vienna

RSS is THE way to get news, and Vienna is a great, free RSS/Atom news reader. It is simple to use, has a built in WebKit browser, and is completely searchable. Vienna is nearly as good as commercial alternatives, or in some cases better.
Our Review | iUseThis

iPod

Senuti
Senuti is the most effortless possible way to get all of the content off an iPod or similar device without even needing to open iTunes. If you have an iPod you need Senuti.
Our Review | iUseThis

Network Tools

KisMac
KisMAC is an opensource and free stumbler/scanner application for Mac OS X using monitor mode and passive scanning.
KisMAC supports several third party PCMCIA cards - Orinoco, PrismII, Cisco Aironet, Atheros and PrismGT. USB Prism2 is supported as well, and USB Ralink support is in development. All of the internal AirPort hardware is supported as well.
iUseThis

Nmap
You will need to install the Apple Developer Tools and compile from source but where would you be without the best port scanner ever built. Nmap is a must security tool for any network admin.

Office & Productivity

Bean
Bean is a simple Word Processor. It is built on the same engine as TextEdit, but adds some extra features related with printing and a word count. It is a simple word processor and not as powerful as MS Word, but it does the job that it’s meant for quite well.
Our Review | iUseThis

LyX
LyX is a different kind of word processor. Most word processors let you focus on content and style, giving you inconsistent documents most of the time. LyX allows you to create professional documents while focusing on structure first, and when you’re done, you can export your document as a PDF or web page. This tool is excellent for professional reports, scientific papers and so on.
iUseThis

NeoOffice

Office Apps are expensive, Office ‘08 starts at $149.95, and although iWork is cheaper it is still $79.95. Enter NeoOffice, a fully featured Office suite, based on Open Office. This differs from Open Office as it is Mac native, and does not require X11 to be installed seperately. A great way to get started with office productivity for free.
Our Review | iUseThis

Skim
Looking for a better PDF reader than Preview? Skim is a PDF reader with a few powerful built-in editing tools such as adding an arrow/circle, or striking out unwanted text. With Skim, you can quickly sort through and edit your PDFs in a pinch.
Our Review | iUseThis

P2P File Sharing

Cabos
Cabos is Gnutella file sharing program based on LimeWire and Acquisition. Cabos provides simple sidebar user interface, firewall to firewall transfers, proxy transfers, Universal Plug and Play, iTunes + iPod integration, “What’s New?” searches, international searches, and more.
iUseThis

Transmission
Transmission is a fast, easy, and free multi-platform BitTorrent client with a focus on being lightweight yet feature-filled. If you are doing any Bit-Torrent downloading and find other clients to be a bit clunky, this is the app you want. Simple, elegant, and completely functional.
iUseThis

Utilities

AppFresh
If your are reading this list, you need this app. It tells you when you need to update, you can use ‘iUseThis’ from within the app and if your not on Leopard it has a killer feature; You can take a snapshot of all your appss and back it up to wherever you want. Of note, this is a ‘Preview’, however it comes highly recommended.
Our Review | iUseThis

AppleJack
AppleJack is a very easy to use tool to troubleshoot your Mac when no other startup disk is available to you. The script gives you an interactive menu-driven environment for basic disk check/repair, permissions repair, .plist validation, cache cleanup, and swap file removal. Sadly AJ no longer works under Leopard 10.5.x but we are still hoping this changes!
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Disk Inventory X
Got a fairly low amount of disk space left on your Mac? That’s where Disk Inventory X comes in - it shows you a visual representation of what files are on your disk, a big block means a big file, and a small block, a small file. Really simple, and highly recommended when space is tight!
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Linotype FontExplorer X
FontExplorer X is a robust and stable program for managing all your fonts, both system and user added, from the leader in font technology LinoType.
Our Review | iUseThis

Onyx
Onyx allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of OS X’s System files, to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, and more.
Our Review | iUseThis

Quicksilver
Love by many, yet so few use it to it’s full potential! An amazing App launcher, and so much more, it’s a must for every Mac, and lightning quick to open your apps. integration with other apps help’s you search them, and even send quick e-mails without even opening Mail.
Our Review | iUseThis

Video

Flip4Mac WMV
Really a must for most users, Flip4Mac removes most of the need to use the ageing mac version of Windows Media Player, by allowing you to play most of your WMV files directly in QuickTime.
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Jing
Jing is fairly new to the scene, but makes it much easier to get your screencasts out. We’ve both used it and blogged about it here at MacApper. A very useful tool for any blogger.
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Miro
Miro (a.k.a Democracy) is another IPTV app, that does so much more. It will play your WMV, XVid and Quicktime files, it’s a BitTorrent client, and it can even save YouTube videos. All for free. A really nice app that will do something for everyone!
Our Review | iUseThis

Perian
Perian enables any OS X application that uses QuickTime to be able to play many other media types like DivX, XviD, mpeg4, AC3 audio, etc. A must download for anyone watching video on their Mac.
Our Review | iUseThis

Real Player
Real Player is a nice all round media player, but it’s unlikely to make you switch from iTunes/Quicktime or VLC; however you need this is you want to watch videos on some websites, such as bbc.co.uk.
Our Review | iUseThis

TubeTV

Who doesn’t love YouTube? Not only is it fun, and a bit of a laugh, but it’s a great way to find great videos; or even some real TV, courtesy of companies like the BBC. However, you need an internet connection to watch it. TubeTV searches YouTube, saves the videos, and converts then to play on other devices.
Our Review | iUseThis

VLC
VLC is another must for every Mac. If your usual media player refuses to play something, chances are VLC will play it. DVD’s, MPEG 1, 2 and 4, OGG Vorbis, DivX and much more, VLC will play it. This really is a must so just get it now.
Our Review | iUseThis

Web Browsers

Camino
Camino is the cocoa-encased, Mac version of Firefox, using the ‘Gecko’ rendering engine . Although Firefox for the mac is available, Camino is more Mac-Like, and works more like other Mac-Apps
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Firefox
This is the second most popular browser in the world, we couldn’t omit it from a list like this. It’s fast, and supports all the plugins that the windows version does. It’s not the best browser on the Mac, however, for a switcher, it’s perfect as it works exactly the same way the windows version does.
iUseThis

Flock
Social Networker? Flock is the browser for you, it integrates with many of the social networks including FaceBook and Twitter, as well as some media sites like YouTube.
Our Review | iUseThis

Shiira
Shiira is a browser, based on the same ‘WebKit’ as Safari.It has some nice transition effects, and more usefully a page dock which alows you to browse through tabs. Shiira is a serious contender to replace your current browser.
Our Review | iUseThis

Widgets

iStat
iStat is a great thing that comes in nearly any format you want, whether it be an app, dashboard widget, or menu-bar item, they all tell you everything you ever wanted to know about what your Mac is doing at any precise moment. They’re fast, and very low on resource useage, so if you need to be in the know, these come highly recommended.
Our Review | iUseThis

So there you have it, our list of freeware for your Mac. We plan to expand this page as quickly as possible, however some great apps likely slipped through the net unnoticed. If you know of any great freeware apps that deserve to be on this list please leave a comment and let us know. Oh and one more thing:

“Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer. ” - gnu.org