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I feel the same way... uTorrent is perfect on Windows, a good alternative on OSX is Transmission. I used to use Azureus and since it got bundled with that crap beta thing they did it sucks. Then I switched to XTorrent, which in idea it sounds good, but it sucks as well. Later on I got so frustrated I tried other torrent apps for Mac like:

Tomato Torrent is a very plain alternative, seriously lacking in eye-candy and begging for a new icon (and maybe a new name too). It's based on the official BitTorrent client. I think it desrves a mention because I know a few people who swear by it. It comes with an AppleScript file that you can place in folders you want to download to. When you want to download a torrent to a specific folder, you just drag the .torrent file onto the piece of AppleScript to initiate the transfer. One pro is that it's an extremely light client that hogs very little RAM. It's the closet thing to uTorrent on the Mac.

Bits on Wheels is a slightly out-dated (last updated Sep. '05), yet popular Mac BitTorrent client. It claims to be "the first 100% native BitTorrent client for the Macintosh" as it is written in Objective-C and Cocoa. Bits on Wheels is freeware but not Open Source. One of its main features is a visual 3D Swarm with which you can observe what's actually going on under the hood, how many seeders and leechers you're connected to and the bits transferring between everyone. Bits on Wheels is very OSeXy (heh!), it's how I'd imagine the default OS X BitTorrent downloader to look if there was one. bits on wheels sawrmIf not to use the first native OS X B.T. client, I'd download it just to fly around in 3D chasing bits.

And lets not forget the grandaddy of them all, Bram Cohen's self-titled BitTorrent application. It's gotten kind of confusing since he named the protocol, his company and his application all BitTorrent. BitTorrent OSX is a very (and I mean very) basic application. It's as feature-full as Safari's download box and that's not saying much. Now some people wouldn't mind something like that, but if you're looking for simplicity Transmission is a much better choice. BitTorrent OSX also takes an age to start up on my MacBook Pro.

Transmission is my current Mac B.T. client of choice. TransmissionIt's an Open Source project, maintained by the developer of the popular Mac DVD ripping application, HandBrake. Transmission does its job well. A neat feature it offers is the ability to view download and upload rates in the dock, so I don't even have to open up the program to check how my downloads are going. Another great thing Transmission does is copy the .torrent file to its support folder, then trash the original file from my desktop thereby leaving no mess of files behind for me to clean up. Now just like everything Transmission has its flaws, the biggest of which is that Demonoid, a leading BitTorrent directory has banned it on ocassion! They say it doesn't adhere to set standards.

For the different torrent apps I mentioned here you can go to:

Bit Torrent OSX: http://www.bittorrent.com/
Transmission: http://transmission.m0k.org/
Tomato Torrent: http://sarwat.net/BitTorrent/
Bit On Wheels: http://www.bitsonwheels.com/

Hope that helps!

Kil

I've been using Tomato Torrent for a couple of months now since I got fed up with Azureus taking up so much resource. It's hardly fully featured, but it does the job without any fuss.

I'll keep my client running today. Will you?

Mine's chugging away, downloading - there's a fair few seeds already so it hasn't uploaded anything yet!

Here's a nice, friendly Mac BitTorrent client for all you GUI-fiends, and while I'm at it, here's a list of conventional mirrors and translations...

The OS X client is still at 3.4.2. Is anyone working on an update?

Better yet, now that BT 4.0.0 uses GTK instead of wxWidgets (as per the release notes), will this hamper the OS X frontend?

The only other OS X native BT frontend I know is Tomato Torrent ... but that's just a tweaked 3.4.2 build. CLI / X Windows here I come...

Can I suggest Tomato Torrent instead? Excellent program. Caveat: the author says it's open source, but the links are broken and appear to be out of date anyhow.

Nice post, but a little out of date, as I see no mention of Poisoned which is a front end to giFT. giFT supports FastTrack (Kazaa), Gnutella, and OpenFT (a hot little network). Personally I'd rather run Poisoned than Kazaa any day.

Furthermore, the BitTorrent community is alive and well on OS X. Azureus works really well, and there's a hot little native client that is better than the standard one.

I've been using the Overnet command line client, which sucks but gets the job done better than the various front-ends floating around.

And then there's Hotline, Carracho, and the new open-source client-server model "Wired".

Enjoy.

you know you can throttle bittorrent's upload and download if you use it from the command line (btdownloadheadless.py specifically, available in the python source) and alternatively there is a mac client that has lots of nice features.

Official client (Doesn't work on Panther!)

A decent Mac-only client

Azureus, a Java client.

You can also grab the standard distribution and run btdownloadheadless.py in Terminal.