Fetch’s interface is easy enough to use: clicking on the Get button in the browser window downloads the selected files, and clicking on the Put Files button uploads files to the current directory. Although Fetch was once the standard FTP program for the classic Mac OS, its inter-face has barely improved since its conversion to OS X. We looked for programs that closely integrated themselves into Mac OS - that mimicked the Finder, supported long file names, and allowed drag-and-drop file transfers.

All the clients we evaluated included these basics, but some outperformed others. In addition, an FTP client should let you set permissions for each file, so you can determine who can view it (read), make changes to it (write), run it (if it’s a program), or search it (if it’s a text file).

Beyond that, even a rudimentary FTP client should have some file-management capabilities, be able to move and delete files from the server, and keep a list of bookmarks for quick access to different servers.

Free ftp software for macs