Download accelerators, managers for Mac

Posted on August 30, 2014  •  2 minutes  • 412 words

Maxel - $7.99

This is my favorite download accelerator by far. I usually do a lot of torrenting on my VPS and download them later via direct HTTP. I just need some basic features of a download accelerator. Heck, axel was working well enough for me, except the part that I have to manually parse the link¹ to it.

Maxel offers Safari/Chrome extension (Firefox is currently in beta-testing phase) and they are quite good. You can select some text on the website and right click -> Download selected links with Maxel. Maxel will identify the selected text and filter out the links for you. This is what make Maxel a little better than Fat Pipe below.

Maxel doesn’t offer speed control but it’s on checklist of the developer.

Fat Pipe Downloader - Free

Another decent download accelerator, Fat Pipe is very similar to Maxel above in term of features. I find it a bit unstable and the browser extension is less convenient than Maxel.

Fat Pipe is currently (as of this post) free on Mac App Store .

Folx - $19.99

Some notable features:

• Tagging system
• iTunes integration
• Scheduling
• Speed control

Offers more features than most. More expensive than most ($19.99). The app can download torrent files as well as creating it. Though, if you’re using a private tracker, there’s a fat chance that the app is not white-listed. None of the private trackers that I use (WhatCD, BTN, PTP, etc..) whitelist Folx.

SpeedTao - Free (beta)

SpeedTao is currently in beta (for quite awhile now). SpeedTao also support torrent download but struggles with the same problem of private trackers as Folx.

SpeedTao has an unique feature: remote download, which allows you to add transfer to a remote machine via iCloud or Dropbox.

Personally, I don’t really like SpeedTao because the app seems like an abandonware already.

iGetter - $25

iGetter is feature-rich, works fairly well except the interface looks like it was made in the 90s. Between iGetter and Folx, I’d say go with Folx. Call me cheap but I don’t want to pay $25 for a software that was last updated over a year ago.

Conclusion

I pick Maxel simply because I don’t need more features than that. Your mileage may vary. Maxel does one thing and does it very well for me.