Yummy FTP: Simply Powerful FTP for Mac OS X

Originally downloaded 8/9/06. I noticed a roundup of FTP clients through MacDailyNews today, and this is a relatively new one I haven’t tried. I’ve been a (mostly) satisfied Transmit customer for years now. Each time I begin to get frustrated with it, Panic comes out with a new release that has amazing new features. My biggest complaint about Transmit, though, is speed. Quite simply, Transmit doesn’t have any. I’ve used Cyberduck quite a bit as a Transmit alternative, and it’s noticeably faster. It doesn’t have all the features of Transmit, but then, it’s free, too. So I love the first bullet point on Yummy FTP’s home page here: “Super-fast transfers.” Sounds good… sign me up for a trial!

Update 9/18/06. I’m here to report that Yummy FTP ate my 25 bucks! It’s actually been a couple of weeks since I decided that Yummy FTP would be my new FTP client. The Transmit developers have done an excellent job of adding features and making the software easier to use… but one thing they haven’t done is address the speed problem. After only a few sessions using Yummy FTP, I realized that it’s blazing speed wasn’t a fluke, or the result of simply beneficial network traffic. It’s real… and it’s really fast!

Of course, if speed were all that mattered in an FTP client, I’d just use Terminal. I also need easy to use and good looking, too! Yummy FTP won’t win any beauty contests, but it’s no dog, either. And it has enough customization features that you can mold it to your personal tastes. As far as ease of use, I have to say this is actually easier to use than Transmit. There are a few things Yummy can do that Transmit simply can’t, and even simple things like maintaining your bookmarks is simpler.

Here are the “pros” I noted while testing:

• Blazing speed
• Intuitive bookmarking
• Great customization options
• Nice bookmark organizer pane… easily see and edit attributes for many bookmarks at once including several for same server
• Supports use of marquee for selecting files in list
• Very easy to copy files from one FTP window to another… for example, moving from the development directory to the production directory.  In Transit, this was always a pain, as files had to move to your hard drive and then back… and the transfers often got stuck in the process.

There are, however, two things Transmit has that Yummy FTP doesn’t, and I really hope they become available in a future update: Tabbed windows, and Webdav support. Yummy’s windows are extremely well behaved—the best I’ve ever seen, since they lie neatly on top of each other rather than trying to cascade like most other software. Still, I’d like the option of organizing my sessions in a single tabbed window. I also miss not being able to connect to my iDisk with Yummy FTP… I had gotten spoiled by Transmit, since it was so easy and convenient to manage some of the iDisk content with my FTP client.

Finally, Yummy has a power feature that was easier to configure in Transmit. You actually can specify more than one editor in Yummy… for example, Photoshop as the editor for .png files, and Smultron for text files. But this feature is hidden in a contextual menu. I’d suggest adding the ability to manage “helper editors” in the preferences, as it is in CyberDuck and Transmit.

All I can say after switching to Yummy FTP is that it makes every other Mac FTP client seem just as pokey as you always thought they were. I’ve tried nearly all of them, over many years, on both Mac and Windows, and this one gave me by far the fastest ride I’ve ever had on the info super-highway!

Version as tested: 1.5.1