I know we’re far off from the days of dial-up where downloading a single document would take hours and you’d pray the connection didn’t time out or that your dad wasn’t expecting an important call. These days are much better. Broadband speeds are stable. With 3G and 4G, even wireless speeds are pretty great. But of course, not for everybody.
There are still moments where you could use a download manager. When you’re downloading a really big file, for example, one that’s multiple GBs. Or you want to download heavy software, data, or even a game perhaps. Download managers provide the luxury of not tearing your hair off when the download times out at 99%. Download managers help you save on your daily allowance of abuses so you can use them for places that really matter – internet trolls, flame wars, and standing up to haters.
The Best Free Download Managers app downloads for Mac: MacX YouTube Downloader YTD Video Downloader MediaHuman YouTube to MP3 Converter Total Video Do. Free Download Manager can be used to preview or convert audio and video files even before they actually download. Free Download Manager Best Features. Ability to preview ZIP files before downloading. Works with Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. Free Download Manager Lite. FDM is like a full version of IDM (Internet Download Manager), but completely free! Don't overpay and don't use cracks - download FDM, an amazingly powerful and hassle-free tool. I use it professionally in different environments to ensure that large downloads are fast and resumeable. Free Download Manager for Mac. Windows macOS Android Linux. Stable release FDM 6.11.0 for macOS 10.12 or later Free Download 64-bit / 32.9 MB. In my opinion it is the best advertising-free download manager – as far as I know there is no comparable tool out there. — Kristen Pawlson. Get custom branded version.
Why Do You Even Need a Download Manager?
It’s a valid question. Chrome downloads files just as well. And on a Mac, if you’re just using the Mac App Store, you shouldn’t even need to download big apps from other sources.
CNET Download provides free downloads for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android devices across all categories of software and apps, including security, utilities, games, video and browsers.
But for a power user, or even just a media fan, download managers make a lot of sense. Here’s why you might just need a download manager for your Mac.
- Pause downloads: This awesome feature is very underrated. When you want to move away, or need to shut off the PC or the download for some reason, pausing is a big help.
- Accelerated downloads: Many direct download sites limit your download speed. To get around that, download managers basically take a segmented (multi-threaded) approach to downloading. More speed for you.
- Schedule downloads: Maybe you only want to download large files at night? Just schedule them for later.
- Managing downloads: Yes, it’s right there in the name. If you download a lot, even if you have great speed, you can do with a download manager. When you merge all the above features with great organization features (queue, folders, tags), you’ve got some ease of mind.
Now that we’ve established the purpose of download managers, let’s talk about the best download managers for OS X.
1. iGetter
iGetter might just be the IDM for Mac. If you’re not familiar with Windows, let me tell you about Internet Download Manager (IDM). It’s a software equivalent of HBO Go, in that many, many people use it, but not that many actually pay for it.
No college freshman’s Windows laptop is complete without a copy of IDM. The reason why IDM is so popular is because it’s awesome and reliable. No matter what you’re downloading and from where, IDM will make that transfer faster and will give you a lot of control over the process.
In some ways, iGetter is like that. In my experience, Macs already get better download speeds than Windows, but iGetter makes it even better. It was released in 1993 and is still in development.
iGetter is free for all, but you can pay $20 for a license. Even if you don’t pay, you get access to all the features. Only you need to wait for a dialogue box for 15 seconds every day.
Best Mac File Manager
iGetter does not look great on Yosemite, but I think the features and ease of use make up for it.
iGetter features:
- Browser plugins for direct download to iGetter.
- Excellent download management features. Pre-populated folders are helpful.
- Good speeds. Accelerated download works as advertised.
2. Folx
Folx is a download manager, torrent client and YouTube downloader all rolled into one. Folx gives you the basics of download management and torrenting for free. Everything else, you’ll need to pay for – $19.99.
Even features like multi-threaded downloading and speed control are not available in the free version.
But the app is stable and fast. Even in the free tier, the downloads are fast enough and you do get 2 streams of multi-threading. Hey, that’s better than one.
3. Progressive Downloader
Progressive Downloader is available on the Mac App Store for $2.99. But you can get it for free directly from the website. And this is the full version.
Yes, the app is not as feature rich as iGetter but it has couple of things going for itself. The app looks right at home on Yosemite. And while it doesn’t have browser integration like iGetter, the Chrome extension works fine for me.
The app delivers where it counts. There’s scheduler, multi-threaded downloading, a resume feature, speed limits, auto shutdown, and more.
Which One is for You?
If you’re looking for a basic but completely free download manager, head to Progressive Downloader’s website and download the app.
If you want more features, can tolerate the bad UI and don’t mind waiting 15 seconds every day for a popup, iGetter is for you. Or you can just pay $19.99 for the pro upgrade.
Speaking of the pro upgrade, if you’re going to shell out 20 bucks, you’ll get far more out of it with Folx.
How Do You Download?
Best Free Download Managers
Do you use a download manager or do you find the built-in download features to be sufficient? Share with us in the comments below.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#Download #Lists
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You may download multiple files on your computer or Smartphone on daily, weekly or monthly basis, but have you ever thought of how these files are organized in your device?Do Have you ever wonder how much time it takes to download one file? Well, if you are not familiar with this basic information. We have giving you the list of top Download managers through which you can download your files in easiest and simplest ways with even faster speed.
What is Download Manger? Download Manager is the software program that manages or handles the complete task of downloading anything from the internet. It acts as a download accelerator that increases the speed of download up to 5 times more than the normal speed of downloading any file.
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Download Managers provide many features that make them best to download files from internet. It includes scanning for viruses, accelerating speed, resuming broken downloads, browsing integration, mutli-section download, sorting file type and placing them in the correct folder and many more. It provides error recovery to resume the download if any failure occurs due to network.
If you are downloading any file, then you can pause and resume according to your ease and convenience. Download managers identify the file you are downloading and puts them in the correct folder.
So, this is the basics about download managers that you must have to download your files for the safest and quickest download. Here we are giving you the list of top 5 Download Mangers.
Here is the list of 5 fastest internet download managers for Windows of 2015
1. Internet Download Manager
Internet Download Manager (IDM) increases the downloading speed up to 5 times than the normal speed, resume and schedule downloads. It has great error recovery and resume capability that it will restart the broken downloads form the point where the download interrupts due to network failure or lost connection.
Internet Download Manager works well with many browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, MSN Explorer, AOL Mozilla Firefox, Avant Browser, Mozilla Firebird and many other popular browsers to handle your downloaded files automatically. It supports proxy servers, protocols FTP and HTTP, authorization, redirects cookies, Mp3 audio and Mp4 video content processing. You can use drag and drop files.
It also provides other features like scheduler, zip preview, enhanced virus protection on complete download of your file on your device or system, build-in download accelerator and many more. It is even supported by many operating systems including Windows 8.1 with complete MMS protocol support.
2. Download Accelerator Plus
Download Accelerator Plus is a freeware download manager that increases the downloading speed five times more than the normal speed that makes it one of the fastest Download Managers.
Download Accelerator Plus has features of Download and Video converter by which you can convert a file to any other format of your choice or that your device supports. You can also get the information before downloading any file like video preview with which you can play your video. It tries to squeeze out the best of your internet connection.
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This will save a lot of time of yours as it breaks the file into multiple parts and download them simultaneously from multiple sources seeking out the fastest mirror and them resembling all the parts of file and hence gives the fastest downloading speed.
With Download Accelerator Plus, you can also watch any video while it’s downloading, like there is no need to wait for the complete download of that video.
3. Free Download Manager
Free Download manager is a powerful download manager with lots of features that helps you to organize, schedule and speed up the Internet file downloads.
It provides three different download speed modes that you can acquire according to your convenience, either use maximum bandwidth to download or you can download files in the background. It supports many download protocols like FTP, BitTorrent and many more. It gives the feature to view the list of downloaded files that are currently active.
Free Mac Software Downloads
Free Download Manager also provides a tabbed interface that lets you to move between various downloaded files that includes Downloads, Torrents and Flash Video downloads. There are also tabs for Site Manager, HTML spider and scheduler.
This also provides the unique feature of community input by which you can contribute to community and by flagging the files in which you are having trouble. In order to download the file, when you enter the URL, there you may find the option to know if any user has reported that file as malicious. In this way you can save your device from downloading malicious code or program.
4. YouTube downloader
YouTube downloader is small and effective application to download video files quickly. This app will give you exactly what you are looking for. You can easily download videos from YouTube, Google, Facebook and many other websites. You can choose the format of the downloaded file and can download them in your Smartphone also.
The user interface is so easily that you can simply find the link of video that you want to download, copy the URL on the search option of Downloader. It may ask you the format in which you want to download and the place where you want to save the downloaded file. There are also some features like you can adjust the volume according to you and can alter the video before importing it.
Best Download Manager For Mac
5. FlashGet
FlashGet is one of the fastest download managers that provide downloading speed 6 times more than the normal downloading speed by the browser. It supports many downloading protocols like HTTP, FTP and MMS. FlashGet give many advanced features like DownThemAll, pausing the resuming the downloading file, splitting the file and download acceleration. You can also download the flash files by the extended version from Firefox.
Download Manager For Mac
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Internet Download Manager For Mac
With FlashGet you can download the files from different locations. It supports many browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, SeaMonkey and many more. It splits the file into many parts and downloads each of them simultaneously resulting in faster speed.