There are so many great Free Mac Apps out there on the net & today I have put together a list that I feel are both popular and very useful to a new Mac user or perhaps just someone looking for a great Mac App that you haven't tried out before.
Enjoy!
Archiving
7zX is a file archiver with high compression ratio. Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests. Usually 7zX compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format, and 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs. 7zX currently supports tar, zip, gzip, bzip2, UNIX compress, 7z, s7z and various kinds of segmented archives.
StuffIt Expander® 2009 easily expands and decodes any compressed file you download from the Internet or receive attached to an email. It expands StuffIt archives, unzips Zip files (created by WinZip or other zip utilities) and decompresses Unix's .tar, .gzip and .bzip files. StuffIt Expander works seamlessly with your favorite browsers like Safari, Firefox and more. From BinHex to Zip, StuffIt to MIME, Expander accesses more formats in less time with zero hassles! Just drag, drop and enjoy!
UnRarX is a Mac OS X Cocoa application that allows you to expand rar archives and restore corrupted or missing archives using par2.
Backup Utilities
Intego Backup Assistant offers an ideal solution for the home user who is looking for a simple, user-friendly way to back up personal data to a safe location and be able to retrieve it easily.
TimeMachineEditor is a software for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard that lets you change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine. You can change the interval or create a more sophosticated scheduling (see screenshot below). This is useful if you don’t need to backup every hour and don’t want the performance penalty. This is also especially useful if you manipulate lots of data within one hour as you would spend the whole day backing up.
Email
A new kind of messaging application, the Postbox™ email client helps you spend less time managing email and more time using email to get things done. Postbox automatically analyzes your e-mail messages, documents, photos, and links to web pages; then it catalogs all this information making it faster to search for and retrieve. Easy-to-use tagging features let you organize messages the way you want and then focus on one project at a time without missing out on important new messages. You can also view messages by conversation, edit messages, and create to-do items that appear in mailbox windows.
Mozilla’s Thunderbird 2 email application is more powerful than ever. Organize Your Email Thunderbird 2 includes many new features to help you manage your inbox. With Thunderbird 2, it’s easier to prioritize and find your important email with tags and the new find bar helps you find content within your email faster.
File Handling
CyberDuck features an easy to use interface with quickly accessible bookmarks. The outline view of the browser allows to browse large folder structures efficiently and you can quickly preview files with Quick Look.
To edit files, a seamless integration with several external editors makes it easy to change content quickly. Both Amazon CloudFront and Cloud Files from Rackspace can be easily configured to distribute your content in the cloud. Many OS X core system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour and the Keychain are supported and a large number of translations makes you feel at home.
Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online. No complicated interface to learn. Dropbox runs in the background on your desktop. Sync your files automatically to your computers and the web. Sign in and access your files from any browser or mobile device. Sharing files with your friends and family is just two clicks away. View your photos in a gallery and share them easily with anyone.
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface.
File Sharing
Search and download files from millions of Mac and Windows users. Search and download files from millions of Mac and Windows users. Speed is everything, so Acquisition is optimized for the fastest transfers - Gnutella & BitTorrent. Acquisition automatically sends downloaded files to iTunes and your iPod or iPhone. It's beautiful, elegant, and simple. Acquisition is the P2P app Mac users deserve.
FrostWire is a fork of the very popular LimeWire PRO Gnutella/Bittorrent client. The purpose of FrostWire is to keep and maintain the freedoms that LimeWire LLC may be forced to withdraw. Share any type of file on Gnutella and the Bittorrent network.
Transmission is designed from the ground up to balance power with simplicity. We've set initial preferences so things Just Work, while advanced features like watch directories, bad peer blocking, and the web interface can be configured with just a few clicks. When Ubuntu chose Transmission as its default BitTorrent client, one of the most-cited reasons was its easy learning curve.
Finder & Desktop Applications
With 8 separate and highly configurable menu extras, iStat menus will let you know exactly what’s going on inside your Mac. Each menu extra can be turned on or off at will. Most menu extras allow for complete control over how they look, including icon, font size and colour. While iStat menus still runs on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, it really shines on 10.5 Leopard, adding more features, options and polish.
Path Finder is an award-winning file browser and management application for Mac OS X. If you've ever wished Apple's Finder just did feature X or feature Y, Path Finder may be what you've been looking for. Path Finder is a standalone application that leverages what you already know about working with your files. It takes the Finder's familiar interface and adds numerous powerful features and interface innovations to help anyone be more productive on Mac OS X.
At first glance, Quicksilver is a launcher. When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly. The search is adaptive, so Quicksilver will recognize which items you are searching for based on previous experience. It also supports abbreviations, so you can type entire words, or just fragments of each. When not in use, Quicksilver vanishes, waiting for the next time you summon it.
Instant Messaging & Communication
Adium is a free and open source instant messaging application for Mac OS X, written using Mac OS X's Cocoa API, released under the GNU GPL and developed by the Adium team. Based on the libpurple protocol library, Adium can connect you to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services and then chat with other people using those services.
For Mac users who have a Windows Live account, communicate or collaborate on the fly with family, friends, or co-workers—down the hall or around the world. Conveniently and instantly share files and gather feedback through Messenger for Mac 7. Attach Word docs, Excel charts, PowerPoint slideshows, or even emoticons to your instant messages.
Skype isn’t just about free Skype-to-Skype calls and easy, low-cost calls to landlines and cell phones around the world. You can also do much, much more. For starters why not send a text message directly from Skype; forward a call to your mobile; or set up an online number for friends, family and colleagues to make a local call from their old-fashioned phone to your Skype, wherever in the world you are.
Conversations Double click on a tweet to view not only that tweet, but the entire conversation history leading up to that tweet. Never lose track of a conversation again. Compose Independent compose windows stay out of your way until you need them. Have as many open at a time as you'd like while you compose your thoughts. Everything has a keyboard shortcut, (Command-Enter will send a tweet). Search Trends See what's hot on Twitter right now, then search for the most recent tweets on those popular topics with a single click. Threaded DM’s Have a real private conversation over Twitter with your Direct Messages displayed just like a real chat. Reply with a single click, and never lose track of who said what.
iPhone & iPod
Edit audio in minutes, not hours. With Fission's streamlined audio editing, you can quickly copy, paste and trim audio, as well as split files. Fission also works with compressed MP3 and AAC formats to edit without the quality loss caused by other editors. Get perfect quality audio when editing naively in the MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV formats.
iMagePhone is a iPhone wallpaper maker for Mac OS X. You may crop, resize, zoom and enhance your own image with the defined position and size according to exact parameters of the iPhone's display. With iMagePhone, you can import iPhoto albums and add over 50 photo effects. Then save as iPhone wallpaper and upload directly to iPhone, email to family and friends, save and organize into wallpapers gallery folders or export into different graphics formats. iMagePhone developed specifically for use with Apple's iPhone and helps you personalize your iPhone/iPod Touch by yourself.
Pod to Mac is freeware that lets you copy or transfer music, videos and playlists from an iPod or iPhone to your Mac and into iTunes. Pod to Mac lets you easily copy, transfer or rip the music, videos and playlists from any iPod or iPhone directly into iTunes on any Mac. By decoding the iPods binary database, Pod to Mac rapidly reveals the contents of any iPod and then lets you choose what to do with the tracks. Play counts, ratings and the other track details are all recovered for every song transferred. The program's features also include audio and video track previews, sortable columns and more!
Office & Document Handling
Adobe Reader software is the global standard for electronic document sharing. It is the only PDF file viewer that can open and interact with all PDF documents. Use Adobe Reader to view, search, digitally sign, verify, print, and collaborate on Adobe PDF files.
FormulatePro helps you open and write on PDF documents. You can fill out any PDF form document, drop in graphics, scribble with the mouse or a tablet, save and print.
NeoOffice is a full-featured set of office applications (including word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, and database programs) for Mac OS X. Based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, NeoOffice has integrated dozens of native Mac features and can import, edit, and exchange files with other popular office programs such as Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Photo, Graphic Design & Image Manipulation
Do you have multiple cameras? Do you spend time quitting iPhoto every time you connect your iPhone? Wish you could have your DSLR open Aperture and have iPhoto launch when you connect your point-and-shoot camera? If so, Cameras is the solution you've been waiting for.
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc.
Img2icns is an application to create icons from images or images from icons, keeping them organized for future use. Creating an icon is as simple as dropping one or more images into Img2icns and choosing an export format. Creating icons on Mac OS X was never so easy or so much fun, so start customizing your desktop just now!
An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.
Jalbum consists of free album software, free hosting and a creative community. With Jalbum it's easy to create your own photo album site. Just the way you want it. Jalbum albums can be published to any site and they can all be shared on jalbum.net. Add your albums to your pages on jalbum.net straight from the software.
OSX Image Resizer is a completely free cocoa application for batch photo / image resizing built upon OSX for Apple's iMac, Mac Book or Mac Pro. Simply download, install and resize your images ready for emailing, burning to a CD or even for uploading to a website such as eBay.
Paintbrush is a simple paint program for Mac OS X, reminiscent of Microsoft Paint and Apple’s own now-defunct MacPaint. It provides users with a means to make simple images quickly, something which has been noticeably absent from the Mac for years. When Apple released the original Macintosh in 1984, they included two applications: MacWrite and MacPaint. Twenty-five years later, every Mac still includes a basic text editor in TextEdit, but a simple paint program is a thing of the past.
Productivity
A clipboard manager for Mac OS X Clipboard history Unlimited clipboard history items You can adjust the number of clipboard history items freely, if you have sufficient memory in your Mac. The default value is 20.
Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Stop printing and start skimming. Explore the links to the left to investigate Skim and consider helping out with the project.
RSS & News Feeds
Gruml allows you to view and manage your feed subscriptions of your Google Reader account on Mac OS X. Read your newsfeeds, manage them in folders, tag them, and much more – all in sync with your Google Reader account.
Looking for an easy-to-use RSS and Atom reader for your Mac? You've found it! The Eddy award-winning NetNewsWire has a familiar three-paned interface and can fetch and display news from thousands of different websites and weblogs. New Version 3.1! Bring the power of RSS right to your Mac OS X desktop
RSS for Everyone Simple to use and packed with features, NewsFire makes it a joy to keep atop the constant flow of information on the web. Smart & Organized It's easy to filter and organize your news with NewsFire's smart groups. Build your own feeds with custom rules, or drag and drop to create groups of related content. Fit & finished NewsFire's feed list, floating new items to the top with smooth animation, is an original. It looks good. It moves well. It delivers the polished Mac experience you expect.
Vienna is a freeware, open source RSS/Atom newsreader for the Mac OS X operating system. It provides features comparable to commercial newsreaders, but both it and the source code are freely available for download.
Security
F
ree GUI front end to the ClamAV opensource virus checker. Update the virus definitions, point it to a file or folder and scan. Other features include logging results to a file, placing infected files into quarantine, monitoring folders for changes to their contents, and a Finder Contextual Menu Item.
MacLoc is the perfect solution for a busy work environment as well as at home where wandering hands can create a bothersome reduction in productivity. This simple application activates the Fast User Switching feature built-in to Mac OS X. After clicking on MacLoc, it will appear that you've logged out, however upon entering your username and password, all open documents and applications will be right where you left them. MacLoc is the perfect solution when you need to step out of the room for a moment. Simply add MacLoc to your dock for quick and easy access.
Prey is a lightweight application that will help you track and find your laptop if it ever gets stolen. It works in all operating systems and not only is it Open Source but also completely free. Recover what is rightfully yours Prey helps you locate your missing laptop by sending timed reports with a bunch of information of its whereabouts. This includes the general status of the computer, a list of running programs and active connections, fully-detailed network and wifi information, a screenshot of the running desktop and — in case your laptop has an integrated webcam — a picture of the thief. Silent but deadly Prey uses a remote activation system which means the program sits silently in your computer until you actually want it to run. If so, it gathers all the information and sends it to your Prey web control panel or directly to your mailbox. The thief will never know his movements are being watched.
Text Editor
Smultron is a free text editor for Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 which is both easy to use and powerful. It is designed to neither confuse newcomers nor disappoint advanced users. It should work perfectly for a whole variety of needs - like web programming, script editing, making a to do list and so on.
Utilities
AppCleaner is a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps. Installing an application distributes many files throughout your System using space of your Hard Drive unnecessarily. AppCleaner finds all these small files and safely deletes them. Simply drop an application onto the AppCleaner window. It will find for the related files and you can delete them by clicking the delete button.
Deeper allows you to enable and disable the hidden functions of Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Expose, Safari, Login window and any Apple's applications. Deeper is an Universal Binary application and works with all Macintosh PowerPC and Intel computers running Mac OS X version 10.5 or later (Leopard). Deeper is also available for Mac OS X 10.4
Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications. Notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you're already in.
Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions, and expansion options. Also included is information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, digital cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, Wi-Fi Cards/Base Stations, Newton, and Mac OS versions.
OnyX allows you to verify the Startup Disk and the structure of its System files, run miscellaneous tasks of system maintenance, configure some hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Dashboard, Exposé, Safari, Login window and some of Apple's own applications, it deletes caches, removes a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome and more.
SimplyBurns is a Mac OS X application with a GUI, which allows the user to burn CD / DVD media. SimplyBurns requires at least Mac OS X 10.4.x aka "Tiger", 10.5.x aka "Leopard" is now also supported
Video, Audio & Animation
Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the
GNU General Public License.
ByteController is a small user interface utility for controlling iTunes. ByteController gives you three buttons in your menu bar: Previous Song, Next Song and Play/Pause. Holding the Previous Song and Next Song buttons plays fast forward or rewinds. ByteController has hot keys for all button actions plus hot keys for controlling volume, and controlling ByteController.
HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional media:
File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SR
VLC 1.0.0 Released This major release introduces many new features, new formats and new codecs to the VLC multimedia framework and fixes a very high number of bugs that were present in the 0.9.x or 0.8.6 versions. VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, ogg, aac ...) as well as DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols.
Virtualization
VirtualBox 3.0.4 released! VirtualBox is a powerful x86 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Web Browsers, Applications & Add-ons
Camino is an open source web browser developed with a focus on providing the best possible experience for Mac OS X users. The Camino Project has worked to create a browser that is as functional and elegant as the computers it runs on. The Camino web browser is powerful, secure, and ready to meet the needs of all users while remaining simple and elegant in its design.
Cooliris is simply the fastest and most stunning way to browse photos and videos from the Web or your desktop. Effortlessly scroll a "3D Wall" of your content from Facebook, Google Images, YouTube, Flickr, and hundreds more.
Firefox is an award winning preview of next generation browsing technology from mozilla.org. Firefox empowers you to accomplish your online activities faster, more safely and efficiently than any other browser, period. Built with Tab browsing, popup blocking and a number of other seamless innovations, Firefox stands out ahead. There are literally thousands of totally free ways to customize your Firefox to fit exactly what you like to do online.
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Stay Informed and Be Heard Flock has features you can’t find in any other browser, whether you’re consuming the news or making the news. People Sidebar Gather your friends from your favorite social networks (now including Bebo) with you in the People Sidebar My World Everything in Flock comes together in one place: My World. Review your feeds, friend updates, favorites and photo/videos updates. Media Bar Quickly find and browse photos and videos from your favorite sites with the Media Bar.
Paparazzi! is a small utility for Mac OS X that makes screenshots of webpages.
Do you use more than one computer (mac or PC)? Perhaps you use a computer at work and have a desktop or laptop at home. Ever wish you could save a book mark on one computer/browser and have it appear in sync with all of your other computers and browsers? Well, today I found a application that simply does all this and more. It's called Xmarks.
Visage
Neo Office
OpenOffice
Adobe Reader
FormulatePro
Linotype FontExplorer X
Smultron
FireFox
GIMP
CyberDuck
FileZilla
ClamXav 
VLC
Flip4Mac
Perian
AppDelete
SimplyBurns
Adium
Skype
CrashPlan
EverSave
StuffIt Expander 
Paparazzi!
Evernote
