Top 5 BitTorrent Clients for Mac

Are you looking for BitTorrent software for your Mac? Here is a list of some of the more popular BitTorrent clients available for the Mac OS.

BitTorrent has really gone mainstream in the last 2-3 years, the Mac OS has a nice list of applications to take advantage of this, some of them are freeware and some are commercial. This list shows you the Top 5 BitTorrent clients for the Mac OS that we recommend.

UPDATED October 19th, 2011

1. uTorrent

Hands down the best Mac OS BitTorrent client

uTorrent for Mac was first released back in 2008, and a stable version 1.0 appeared last July. It sports many of the features BitTorrent users have come to expect from a BitTorrent client:

• µTorrent Remote and Mobile: Simple, secure access to µTorrent from anywhere. No complicated network configuration required. Add and manage your torrents from any browser, mobile browser and even an Android app.  
• Scheduler: Pre-schedule start, limit and stop activity for downloads at regular intervals throughout the week. A valuable feature if you’re stymied by metered and shared networks.
• Feeds: Subscribe and follow torrent RSS feeds. Set up Smart Feeds to auto-magically fetch torrents and start downloads for you.
• Scheduler: Start, limit and stop activity at regular intervals to abide by metered and shared networks.

2. Transmission

Just What You Need — None Of What You Don’t

Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat. Furthermore, it is free for anyone to use or modify.

It Just Works

Transmission runs natively on over five operating systems. Seamless configuration of your network, intelligent banning of peers who send corrupted data, protocol encryption, and built in Peer Exchange are some of the features which enable Transmission to download your files as quickly as possible. All this is done in the background, without the user having to worry about complicated settings.

Open Source

Transmission is fully open source, with most code licensed under the liberal MIT License and with select code licensed under the GNU General Public License. If you are interested in helping out the Transmission project in any way, we encourage you to head over to our development page. The current developers welcome anybody who is interested in implementing new features, documentation or translations.

Powerful Torrent Management

These days, bandwidth is a precious commodity. Transmission allows you to ration this commodity efficiently. You might want to queue your torrents for maximum performance. Or throttle their speed during peak periods. Transmission easily lets you do both, and thus only works its hardest when you want it to. Support for Growl notifications and dock badging keep you updated with what’s going on so you can get back to doing more important things.

3. Bittorrent

BitTorrent for Mac features:

• Lightweight client
• Local peer discovery
• Configurable bandwidth scheduler
• Global and per-torrent speed limiting
• RSS Downloader
• Spyware-Free

It also features BitTorrent DNA, which stands for Delivery Network Accelerator. BitTorrent DNA is an enterprise-grade content delivery accelerator. It is distributed by your favorite websites and software companies to speed up your downloads by connecting to multiple sources of the same file. During and after each download, your computer helps distribute what you download. By giving and receiving in this way, your favorite websites operate more efficiently and provide a better and faster experience for everyone.

4. XTorrent

Search Everywhere, Easily

Xtorrent is all about search. Type keywords in and the results show up right in Xtorrent. One click later and you’re downloading your content. It’s ridiculously easy… and it’s only in Xtorrent.

Subscribe to Content, Easily

Xtorrent consolidates the work of many apps into one. Ditch your RSS reader and your web browser… Xtorrent lets you subscribe to RSS torrentcasts directly. Just like the search interface, you’re only one click away from downloading the latest content.

Get Exactly What You Want

You can browse the files and folders of a torrent before downloading and see its real-time swarm status. Easily narrow your search results using the straightforward media type and keyword filters.

Hardcore Technology, Mac Simplicity

Xtorrent has the svelte body of a supermodel and the brute strength of an ironman. In true Mac form, it successfully marries high-performance technology with a truly easy to use interface. Mac users deserve nothing less.

5. BitRocket

BitRocket is a Native(Open Source) BitTorrent client for Mac OS X. At the heart of it’s core resides the powerful libtorrent BitTorrent library. BitRocket is aimed to be a good alternative to other Mac OS BitTorrent clients.

• RSS support (Download .torrent’s from within the application)
• Integrated (Customizable) Search Engine (Download .torrent’s from within the application)
• Flexible Filtering
• Torrent Generator
• Live Info View
• UPnP and NAT-PMP Port Forwarding