Utilities & Operating Systems for Mac

From driver downloads to registry cleaners, CNET Download.com features all the latest utilities and drivers. Whether you're looking for FTP clients, compression utilities, or software to back up your hard drive, CNET Download.com has you covered. See all 3,178 in this category.

Most Popular

New Release

Editors' Picks

for the week of: October 21, 2012

TitleDownloads
  1. 1.
    Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard

    Operating Systems & Updates

    11,066
  2. 2.
    Apple Mac OS X Lion

    Operating Systems & Updates

    3,649
  3. 3.
    MacZip

    File Compression

    3,603
  4. 4.
    Disk Drill

    System Utilities

    3,357
  6. 5.
    StuffIt Expander

    File Compression

    2,807
  7. 6.
    The Unarchiver

    File Compression

    2,090
  8. 7.
    Apple Boot Camp

    Operating Systems & Updates

    2,041
  10. 8.
    NTFS-3G

    System Utilities

    1,924
  11. 9.
    WinZip Mac

    File Compression

    1,740
  12. 10.
    OnyX (Snow Leopard)

    Maintenance & Optimization

    1,710

See all most popular software

for the week of: October 21, 2012

Title Release date
  1. 1. Tri-BACKUP Oct 26

    Backup Software

  2. 2. OSXFUSE Oct 26

    File Management

  3. 3. Mountain Oct 25

    File Management

  4. 4. Clusters Oct 25

    File Compression

  5. 5. Default Folder X Oct 24

    File Management

  6. 6. iStat Menus Oct 24

    Diagnostic Software

  7. 7. Arq Oct 24

    Backup Software

  8. 8. DiskCatalogMaker Oct 24

    File Management

  9. 9. Magican Oct 24

    System Utilities

  10. 10. MacCleanse Oct 23

    System Utilities

See all new releases

for the week of: October 21, 2012

Title
  1. 1.
    SuperDuper

    Backup, clone, and restore your information.

  2. 2.
    FontAgent Pro

    Organize your fonts and maintain their integrity.

  3. 3.
    Butler

    Bring up files and information using keyboard and keyword shortcuts.

  4. 4.
    CrashPlan

    Automatic backup to local drives, friends' drives, or the cloud.

  5. 5.
    Apple Mac OS X Lion

    Mac operating system for Intel-based Macs.

  6. 6.
    Carbon Copy Cloner

    Clone, synchronize, backup files.

  7. 7.
    Caffeine

    Menu bar item to temporarily disable sleep & screen savers.

  8. 8.
    Data Rescue

    Do-it-Yourself Data Recovery Software.

  9. 9.
    Drive Genius

    Maintain, manage, and optimize storage.

  10. 10.
    A Better Finder Rename

    Powerful File, Photo & Music Renaming Utility.

See all editor's picks

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An introduction to Utilities & Operating Systems

Have you ever added a TV tuner card to your computer, only to have the DVD drive stop working? Maybe you've tried to install software and gotten an error message such as "The file foofah.dll is missing or damaged." The only time most people will need to deal with a driver is when something goes awry. Essentially, a driver is a piece of software that communicates the special needs of a hardware device or software application to an operating system. Windows comes with most of the drivers you need, but sometimes plugging in a new device--such as a digital camera or printer--will trigger a search for drivers. If the maker of your device doesn't offer drivers on its Web site, try searching our library for the name of the device or corrupted DLL.

This category is also the home of popular programs such as the top-rated SmartFTP Client, which made our list of the best free utilities. Installing and uninstalling software, deleting files, and other daily tasks can take a toll on your computer's performance. To test how well your PC is running, try a benchmarking program such as SANDRA Lite. Cleaning out the dead wood with a system optimizer such as Ace Utilities or System Mechanic will straighten out some Registry problems, improve system speed, and free up disk space. Don't forget to back up your data regularly with something like Second Copy so you can replace any files you regret erasing, such as the driver for your nVidia ForceWare Graphics card.

File-compression tools include the classic WinZip and the newcomer WinRAR, which are both excellent shareware products that provide lots of free functionality. Among the wide variety of software within Tools & Utilities, you'll find bookmark managers such as Bookmark Buddy, download managers such as Download Accelerator Plus, file-sharing tools such as LimeWire or Morpheus, and search tools such as Google Desktop.