9 Reasons to use Cyberduck for FTP

Cyerduck is a great application for uploading and downloading files using FTP. It manages to be customizable while remaining fast and light-weight. Version 3.03b introduces some great new features.

Don’t let the cute icon fool you–Cyberduck will handle most of your FTP needs. Here are 9 reasons why you should be using Cyberduck.

9. Upload from the Widget

Cyberduck has a great widget that lets you upload from your Dashboard. This widget is useful because it’s small enough to stay out of the way, but smart enough to use your existing bookmarks. The widget also looks nice.

8. Applescript Support

Like many applications, Cyberduck supports Applescript. It even comes with some standard scripts like uploading from iPhoto and uploading screenshots. All of these scripts come bundled with Cyberduck in the Extras folder.

Read the Readme.txt to learn more about using these.

7. Preferences Galore

Cyberduck provides dozens of preferences for customizing your experience.

You can:

• Change the browser’s appearance
• Save your workspace
• Use Keychain for managing passwords
• Manage how transfers work
• …and much more

6. Limit Bandwidth and Connections

Limiting bandwidth at the global level is extremely easy. Open up Preferences and switch to the Bandwidth tab. Here you can set the maximum bandwidth Cyberduck can use at anytime.

Setting a bandwidth limit at the transfer level is even easier. Open up the Transfers Window by pressing Command+T. Select the transfer you want to limit and select the bandwidth limit in the bottom right hand corner. This ensures the selected transfer will not exceed the limit you set.

Limiting the max number of connections is just as easy. This setting is located right next to the bandwidth limit. In the below example I allow Cyberduck to have 4 transfers simultaneously.

5. Easy Uploads with Drag-n-Drop

Drag-n-drop is one of the fastest ways to upload files with Cyberduck. Generally speaking you can upload files from any application by dragging the files on to the dock icon or the main browser window.

This uploads the selected files to the currently active FTP connection.

You can also drag files onto Cyberduck while its closed. When this is done, Cyberduck reconnects to your latest FTP connection.

Cyberduck used to allow dragging files on to a bookmark. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore. Cyberduck 3 removed the bookmarks drawer, and you can no longer drag-n-drop to a specific bookmark. Bummer.

4. Quick Changes with External Editors

If you need to make a quick change to a file, using an external editor is a great way to do this. Cyberduck allows you to edit a file remotely as if it were stored on your local filesystem.

To do this Control+Click a file and select Edit With followed by your text editor.

As soon as your done making changes, save the file and Cyberduck automatically uploads the file. Quick and easy.

There’s also a way to set a default text editor inside Preferences -> General. If you set this preferences, instead of Control+Clicking, you can press Command+K to edit the currently selected file.

Note: I wouldn’t recommend doing this all the time. I’ve had file uploads fail which resulted in a corrupted file. This should be used for small changes and only when you already have a backup.

3. Amazon S3 Support

Amazon S3 is a great service for storing and serving information. The idea is you pay as you go, and only pay for what you need. If you need 10MB, fine. If you need 10TB, S3 can handle that as well.

One problem however, is S3 doesn’t support FTP–so S3 clients for OS X (S3 Browser and JungleDisk) are lacking in many ways.

Fortunately, CyberDuck now supports S3–so quickly managing your buckets (folders) is extremely simple:

The interface for Cyberduck is much friendlier than S3 Browser or Jungle Disk, making managing S3 files fast and easy.

2. Quick Look With Files

The coolest new features in Cyberduck 3 is quick look support. That’s right, you can quick look remote files on an FTP server with Cyberduck.

Press space on any file and you will see a quick look window pop up nearly instantly.

Just like in Finder, you can scroll through items by pressing the Up/Down arrow keys.

Need to make sure an image is correct before you download it? Cyberduck quick look is what you’re looking for!

1. It’s Free!

The #1 reason to use Cyberduck–it’s free.

Cyberduck is free to use, but if you find it useful consider donating. It takes hard work to create software like this–and the developers deserve to be compensated.

Cyberduck has always been my favorite FTP application. It accomplishes exactly what I need without extra features getting in the way.

That being said, version 3 is faster and added some great features that give the paid alternatives (YummyFTP or Transmit) a run for their money.

Download Cyberduck today!