The macosxhints Rating:
[Score: 9 out of 10]
- Developer: ManyTricks / Product page
- Price: €9.95 (free trial available; €6.95 cross-grade)
What does Leech offer that you don't get from your browser's built-in download tools? The biggest issue for me is that downloads are now independent of the browser (once they've begun). So if your browser crashes, you don't then have to start all over with a big set of downloads. Beyond that, though, Leech keeps a fully-searchable (and sortable) history of the files you've downloaded with it, making it easy to find an old download and (among other things) download it again. Leech's dock icon serves as a simple progress indicator, with the arrow icon filling in as downloads progress (and a badge shows how many downloads are in progress). You can limit the number of concurrent downloads, target files for downloading while offline, tell your Mac to shut down when all downloads are complete, use rules to control where downloads wind up based on certain conditions, and much more. Dan Frakes covered Leech as a Mac Gem last week; you can read his detailed write-up if you'd like additional information on the program.
Leech will work as either a standalone application, or as a well-integrated add-on with Safari, Camino, OmniWeb and Firefox (using an add-on named FlashGot; Option-click will send download links to Leech). It works as an add-on by using an Input Manager (in all but Firefox), which some people don't necessarily like to install on their machines. Leech is very clear about how it does what it does, however, explaining in advance how the integration works, and offers an easy uninstall option. (Browser integration is not installed by default; you have to choose a menu item within the program to integrate Leech with your browsers.) I use Leech primarily with Firefox, and the integration via FlashGot works quite well, though it's not quite as seamless of an experience as it is in one of the Input Manager browsers.
If you're using Leech in standalone mode, one annoyance (and one that Leech probably has no ability to overcome) are sites that use redirection links for downloads, such as you'll find on versiontracker.com. Sending these download links (via drag and drop) to Leech won't work properly, though they'll work just fine when Leech is integrated with the browser (except in Firefox, that is).
This minor issue aside (I use macupdate.com for most of my downloads, as their download links work fine with Leech in either mode), Leech is a great tool if you download a lot of stuff. It takes minimal RAM (it's running with 17MB of real RAM right now), has a clean and effective UI, and offers enough features to make it worth the cost -- at least for a serial demo downloader like me!

