Best Free BitTorrent Client for Mac OS

• qBittorrent

  "I was amazed at how quickly qBittorrent got going on the torrents. Many of the other clients would have speeds jump around, but qBittorrent ran at a stable speed level throughout the download." (Review)

• µTorrent

  "This is a top flight bittorrent program with excellent speeds on torrents, an efficient and stable client with a large amount of features packed into a tiny program. It's also by far and away the most popular bittorrent client with the excellent support by FAQs, guides and forums. Wide acceptance at private sites." (Review | Guides for Optimizing µTorrent)

• Transmission

  "Transmission is a cross-platform BitTorrent client that is open source, easy, lean and powerful." (Guides for Optimizing Transmission)

• Vuze

  "The Vuze Bittorrent Client is an end-to-end application for all your torrent needs. Although it is a complete bittorrent downloader, Vuze maintains a lightweight footprint, doesn't slow your computer down, and quickly downloads torrents. Vuze makes it easy for you to find torrents anywhere, whether you are downloading torrents from a tracker site or anywhere else on the web. Once you find a torrent the Vuze Bittorrent Client makes it simple to download torrents and automatically optimizes torrent download speeds. Once your downloaded torrents are finished Vuze makes it straightforward and simple to watch and listen to the content you downloaded. Vuze simply covers anything you'll run into when downloading bittorrent torrents." (Guides for Optimizing Vuze)

Best Free Download Manager for Mac OS

• 4K Video Downloader

  "4K Video Downloader allows to download video, audio and subtitles from YouTube, and many other video sites, in high-quality and as fast as your computer and connection will allow. Downloading is simple and straightforward: just copy the video link from your browser and click 'Paste Url'."

• MacX YouTube Downloader

  "MacX YouTube Downloader is specially designed for Mac users to not only download videos from YouTube for free but also download videos from Facebook, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Vevo, and another 300+ video sharing sites. It supports free downloading YouTube videos on Mac of different resolution and format, including common YouTube videos or HD videos in 8k/5k/4K Ultra HD, 1080P or 720P."

• Progressive Downloader

  "A free download manager for your Mac that supports multi-thread downloading and mirror search. It's also capable to download files from the most popular file hosting services."

• JDownloader

  "An open-source download management tool with a huge community of developers that makes downloading as easy and fast as it should be. Users can start, stop or pause downloads, set bandwidth limitations, auto-extract archives and more."

Best Free Email Client for Mac OS

• Mozilla Thunderbird

  "A free open source POP and IMAP email client with an intuitive user interface, customizable and expandable through add-ons.

  A notable extension is Webmail, allowing POP3 access to webmail services operated by Yahoo, Hotmail, Lycos, MailDotCom, Gmail and Libero. Thunderbird email files can be indexed by the Google and other desktop search programs." (Review)

• Opera Mail

  An email client built into your browser - right where you need it the most.  Opera offers an email client built right into your favorite browser.  Opera Mail powerfully organizes, indexes, and sorts your messages while transforming your Opera web browser into a complete communication tool.

Best Free File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Client for Mac OS

• FileZilla

  A very credible alternative to commercial programs, lightweight, totally reliable and easy to use with a simple layout. It has most features including a site manager, firewall and proxy support, SFTP, SSL and Kerberos GSS security, restart, drag 'n drop and a lot more. (Review)

• Cyberduck

  "Cyberduck is an open source FTP, SFTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, QuickLook and the Keychain." (Review)

Best Free Hotspot Finder for Mac OS

• Angry IP Scanner

  " Angry IP Scanner (or simply ipscan) is an open-source and cross-platform network scanner designed to be fast and simple to use. It scans IP addresses and ports as well as has many other features. It is widely used by network administrators and just curious users around the world, including large and small enterprises, banks, and government agencies. It runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, possibly supporting other platforms as well. "

• Wireshark

  "Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer. It lets you see what's happening on your network at a microscopic level. It is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions."

Best Free Instant Messaging Client for Mac OS

• GQMessenger

  "GQMessenger is an open-sourced cross platform all-in-one messaging client. The client includes AOL OSCAR, IRC, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and ICQ (OSCAR). Written in Java for cross-platform support. Additional Project Details: Languages English Intended Audience Developers, End Users/Desktop User Interface Cocoa (MacOS X), Win32 (MS Windows), X Window System (X11) Programming Language Java."

• Psi

  "Psi is an instant messaging application for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X that connects to the free, open XMPP network. XMPP is an open instant messaging protocol that drives the world's largest open IM network. Whether you use Windows, Linux, or a Mac, Psi is right at home on your desktop. From the system tray icon on Windows to the dock badges on Mac OS X, Psi takes advantage of each operating system's unique features and appearance to provide a first-class IM experience on almost any computer."

• Trillian

  "Trillian for Mac is a free messenger that makes it easy to chat with your friends no matter where they are. Ad Supported! Use Trillian to connect to Facebook, Twitter, GTalk, AIM, Yahoo, and much more. As an added bonus, Trillian for Mac syncs beautifully with Trillian for iPhone when you're on the go!"

Best Free Remote Access Software for Mac OS

• LogMeIn

  "LogMeIn is the highest rated product in the 'unattended' category. This is a web-based service that's extremely easy to set up and use and can be accessed from any computer with a browser. The free version won't allow file transfer or remote printing but is a great solution for accessing your remote data as well as file sharing. Registration is required before using the product, free for personal and commercial use." (Review)

• TeamViewer

  "It is very reliable, allows both attended and unattended control and has great features. There is a portable version of the viewer if you want to use an application or they also have a web-based control site that requires no installation to remotely control computers. TeamViewer is a commercial product and only allows you to use it for personal use." (Review)

• Screenhero

  "Collaborative screen sharing allows both users to have a mouse and easily take turns using applications from a distance."

Best Free RSS Reader-Aggregator for Mac OS

• RSSOwl

  "RSSOwl can be used on all major platforms like Windows, Linux (32 Bit and 64 Bit) and Apple Mac OS X. You can even run it as plugin inside Eclipse. With RSSOwl it is easy to keep your list of subscriptions and articles synchronized with your Google Reader account. Every feed that is synchronized will keep its article unread state, labels and starred state in sync with RSSOwl. RSSOwl is available in many languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Traditional Chinese and Chinese Simplified."

Best Free Web Browser for Mac OS

• SeaMonkey Suite

  "Web-browser, advanced e-mail, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing made simple ... all your Internet needs in one application. Under the hood, SeaMonkey uses much of the same Mozilla source code which powers such successful siblings as Firefox and Thunderbird."

  I prefer SeaMonkey for its compatibility with Firefox extensions (Firefox no longer supports extensions ... SeaMonkey still has them available from here), its Data Manager, The retro looking "Tabs-on-the-Bottom" old Mozilla standard UI, and its extensive customization options. The SeaMonkey Data Manager has ALL of the settings for each website in one place - sensibly laid out in tabs. From the Data Manager you can quickly access any domain's settings for Cookies/Permissions/Preferences/Passwords/Data Storage/or Form Data without having to crawl through several preference panes - and you can quickly search/sort by domain and/or data type also. (And SeaMonkey's Composer pane is an up-to-date 'Bug-Fix' version of "NVu" or "Kompozer": and is in my "Top 3" WYSIWYG HTML Design Tool list. Bonus.) NOTE: looks like it is unsupported. No updates in a while.

• Opera

  "It might be the most feature rich browser ever. Its eye candy interface combined with speed, security and lightness gives us a rich browsing experience.

  If Opera Turbo was the main highlight in its earlier version, release of version 11 provides further surprises. A faster javascript engine with improved HTML 5 support, CSS3 rendering, and a one-third reduction in disk burden with respect to the last version (despite the new features) makes us WOW." (Review)

• Google Chrome

  "Based on the open source WebKit engine and Google's V8 Javascipt engine, Google Chrome has been one of the fastest browsers available across multiple benchmarks. It's pleasant, fast, standards compliant and versatile. Google's fastest browser tuned itself from a fast, lightweight browsing alternative to a sad browser with no competitive features. (NOTE: Google no longer supports Netscape Plugins! No JAVA Support ... MANY 'JAVA Based Games' web sites are recommending you install any browser EXCEPT Chrome! This Editor uses sites that still use JAVA as a part of their web design: and no longer recommends Google Chrome to anybody.)" (Review)

• Apple Safari

  "Apple's new Safari, along with the release of the God phone I-Phone 4, are certainly good news to browser fans. Not much has changed in version 5 except for some neat features. With a slight improvement in performance and standards support, Safari is still the best browser for MAC. Safari STILL supports Plugins (AND JAVA Also!) ... Chrome no longer does ... so I switched back to Safari." (Review)

Best Free Webpage Photo Representation software for Mac OS

• SiteCapture

  "SiteCapture is a software application for Mac OS X that creates image representations of web pages. With the click of one button SiteCapture loads a set of web pages and creates images in the format you want. The pages are rendered using WebKit, the browser engine used by Safari. What for? Fill your website portfolio page with screenshots, effortlessly. And because you can create them with one click, it's very easy to keep such a page updated with the latest screenshots. What pages? Choose a Safari bookmark folder and SiteCapture will process each single bookmark contained in it. Or manage your own list of web pages within SiteCapture. Or synchronise the web addresses with a server. What size? Choose which size the virtual browser window should be and specify a thumbnail size — you can either save only the thumbnails or keep the original sized images too. The supported image formats are JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF or BMP. What then? Use Automator to streamline your workflow: Append a date to the image file names or upload them to your web server or do whatever you want."