TriedIT - Software and Hardware News and Reviews

Windows and Linux have tons of BitTorrent clients available for them. What about on the Mac? There are several decent BitTorrent clients available, so I decided to check out four of them, and see what I thought about each of them.

BitTorrent OSX (version 4.4.1 - site)

If I’m going to review BitTorrent clients, I might as well start with the original client. If you like to keep things simple the original BitTorrent OSX client, written by Bram Cohen the creator of BitTorrent (protocol, client, AND company), will certainly be as simple as it can get. Behold the interface:

BitTorrent OSX Interface

The configuration options are just as simple. You can set the maximum upload speed, but only globally and not per torrent. You can also change the port the client uses for communication, some basic connection limits (i.e. max number of peers to connect to), and the colors the client shows for active torrents. That is basically the extent of options this client offers. You can tell it at what share ratio to stop seeding a torrent as well.

In using it I found that torrent files downloaded from one of my favorite torrent sites would not allow me to use BitTorrent OSX as my client because they had banned it. On their FAQ they list the clients allowed to use the tracker and the official BitTorrent client was not listed without any explanation why. I couldn’t find any information on Google about why this client might be banned, but perhaps I didn’t look hard enough.

In any case, BitTorrent OSX does work, though I can’t say I like it at all. Because it is written in the cross-platform Python language, ports are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux (and other Unix OS’s). My main use of this client came under Linux using the text only interface to download torrents remotely over SSH. I have never liked the GUI component of BitTorrent (the client).

Azureus Java BitTorrent Client (version 2.5.0.4 - site)

Up to this point, Azureus has been my BitTorrent client of choice, mainly due to the fact that on a regular basis I use Mac, Linux, and Windows computers. Because Azureus is written in Java, it’s available on any OS with the Java runtime. True, the original BitTorrent client is cross-platform, but since I have never liked it and Azureus offers a boat load of features, I pretty much stuck with Azureus.

Azureus torrent list and torrent detail screens.

Azureus offers a wide range of configuration options, which I’m not going to go into here. More or less you can configure almost anything you want about how the client operates. You are also able to control bandwidth allocation on a per-torrent basis as well as many other options to fine tune individual torrents. I find this to be useful when I’m downloading several torrents and want a particular one to finish faster, I cap the download and upload bandwidth of the other torrents to let the one I want as soon as possible to finish quicker. Azureus also places an information icon in the menu bar so you can close the main window and still get torrent status information without having the entire user interface up.

Azureus’ configuration screen

One thing I really like about Azureus is the extremely detailed information it gives about each torrent. It displays swarm information, and information about the individual peers you’re connected to. You can even elect to only download particular files out of a torrent if you want, or assign different priorities to each file. For example, if you’re downloading a season of some TV show and you want to make sure the first episode gets downloaded first so you can start watching it, you can give that file higher priority than all the other files so it downloads sooner.

You can also expand Azureus’ functionality by enhancing it through plugins. I haven’t checked out any of the ones that are available but their website lists a number that seem pretty interesting to me.

The main gripe I’ve heard people have about Azureus is that it is slow and uses a lot of resources. This is true. I used to run it on my G3 700Mhz iBook (640MB RAM) and it took at least a minute to open and start doing anything useful. However, once it’s loaded it seems to be fine in terms of performance. Being a Java application it is a memory hog but personally I feel that the features and the user friendly interface it offers more than make up for it.

Also, to date, I’ve never had a problem being able to use torrents from any tracker with Azureus. It is also a free open source application.

One last thing to note is that Azureus supports distributed hash table (DHT) tracking, so if the tracker you’re using goes down for some reason, Azureus can use DHT to find peers and seeds using that particular torrent. I have successfully downloaded entire files using only DHT, so this feature has come in handy. This feature is handy as well if you want to make your own torrent but don’t want to have to host the tracker yourself.

Transmission (version 0.6.1 - site)

Transmission is very similar in appearance to BitTorrent OSX, but it definitely looks far less plain.

Transmission

Configuration is very limited, and there’s no per-torrent options. You can view a little more detailed information about each individual torrent than with BitTorrent OSX, but there’s nothing near the level of detail you get with Azureus.

Transmission works. It does accomplish the basic needs of a BitTorrent client while being very lightweight. It will do what most people need, but nothing more.

Transmission is also free open source software, and has a GTK+ interface so it can be used as well on Linux and Windows.

BitRocket (version 0.1(25) - site)

BitRocket seems to be pretty new on the scene compared to the other ones above. The latest version as of this writing was released on October 7, 2006. The main thing I noticed right away about this client, unlike the others, is it looks like a Mac OS X application. Clearly that was one of the major design goals of this client.

BitRocket

It really does look nice. I didn’t use it long enough to get a true feel for its stability, but it didn’t crash on me nor did I encounter any glaring bugs while using it.

BitRocket, like BitTorrent OSX and Transmission, is very light on the configuration options. The configuration window resembles that of any application written natively for Mac OS X. Personally, I like a lot more control than what is offered, but the average user does not need or want as many configuration options as I prefer.

BitRocket also doesn’t give you in-depth options on individual torrents and you cannot control bandwidth on a per-torrent basis. It also doesn’t support my favorite Azureus feature of setting priority on files in a torrent or being able to select which files in a torrent I want to download.

BitRocket also features the ability to search for torrents from within the client. It uses the RSS feeds from various torrent sites and gives you the ability to download the torrent file directly from the client. This feature rocks. I’d have to say, other than the beautiful GUI, this is probably BitRocket’s killer feature.

BitRocket is definitely the best in terms of GUI aesthetics. It blends in with OS X which makes it feel like it belongs on your system. The dock icon also updates to show your download and upload speeds.

I definitely like BitRocket. I hope the development on it continues and some of the features I like in Azureus become part of BitRocket. If they do I feel that I will probably switch to using BitRocket as my OS X BitTorrent client of choice.

One last note about BitRocket is that it is also free open source software.

Other clients to note

The four above aren’t the only options when it comes to BitTorrent clients on the Mac.

Bits on Wheels is one I found many references to in checking out different clients, but the main problem with it is that it doesn’t appear to be updated anymore. It bills itself as the first native torrent client on OS X but its last release was November 19, 2005. I decided based on the fact it isn’t updated anymore to not try it out. It’s freeware, but not open source. If anyone has used it, please feel free to leave a comment about your thoughts on Bits on Wheels.

Tomato Torrent is another client I found several references to. It is based off the official BitTorrent client source, and due to that fact I decided to test out something different. It is free and open source. I didn’t find any screen shots on their website, so I downloaded it just to get a screen shot of it.

Tomato Torrent

My Favorite Mac OS X BitTorrent Client

After trying out these four clients my favorite is still Azureus. A close second is BitRocket, but mainly because of its in-client torrent search features and its native OS X graphical interface. If it included more per-torrent options I would probably switch to it right now.

Feel free to let me know what your favorite OS X BitTorrent client is and why. Maybe there’s a better one out there for me.