Cyberduck

Cyberduck is an open-source FTP client whose purpose is to help you connect to remote hosts and download/upload files. It that can be run on Windows and Mac OS X platforms, and includes support FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Rackspace Cloud Files, and other connections.

The ace up its sleeve is definitely the user interface. It looks clean and intuitive, integrates a well-organized suite of features, and gives you the possibility to perform browser-like actions in order to search in the directories stored in a server. For example, you can easily browse throughout directories using the ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons.

A new connection can be quickly defined by selecting the connection type (e.g. FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3). Depending on the type of connection that you want to establish, the tool integrates several dedicated parameters.

For example, if you want to set up an FTP connection, you need to provide details about the server, port, username and password. You may opt for an anonymous login and make the app save the password. More options are offered to advanced users who may need to specify the path, pick the connection mode (default, active or passive) and choose the encoding type.

Cyberduck gives you the possibility to save your favorite connections as bookmarks. With the aid of the bookmark manager, you can easily add, delete, or edit the connections. You may duplicate bookmarks and sort them by nickname, hostname or protocol.

The history panel keeps track of all your connections so you can easily connect to past ones, while the search feature proves to be quite handy in case you want to quickly identify an item.

When it comes to downloading data, this task can be accomplished using just a few clicks. You can resume, reload, stop or remove the current process, limit the bandwidth, and open the saving directory. The same features are available for uploading tasks, and you can also make use of the drag-and-drop support.

The Transfers window reveals all your uploading/downloading operations. What’s more, you can get detailed information about the selected directory, such as size, location, URL, permissions, owner, group, creation and modification dates, as well as checksum.

Other notable features worth being mentioned enable you to refresh the information displayed in the main window, create new folders and files, copy or open URLs, delete items, as well as create archives.

Cyberduck gives you the freedom to tweak several general features so you can save your workspace (it saves connections when quitting and restores them upon relaunch), show hidden files, double-click on a file to open it in an external editor, choose the default protocol, and ask for confirmation when you want to disconnect.

When it comes to file transfer settings, you may configure the way downloads and uploads are handled when they already exit in the target location (e.g. overwrite, resume, rename), set up permissions for files and folders (read, write or execute), preserve timestamps when downloading/uploading, and apply filters by excluding files that match a regular expression.

Last but not least, you are allowed to select the text editor used for opening files, enable the AES256 encryption algorithm on upload, limit the maximum bandwidth for the downloads and uploads, alter proxy parameters, and enter the timeout for opening connections.

Cyberduck integrates a powerful suite of features, successfully manages to transform complex FTP configuration settings into easy-to-work-with and intuitive parameters, and is suitable for rookies and professionals alike.