Most efficient ways to speed up download speeds on Mac

Being online is being connected to the rest of the big world. If you have enough speed in your connection it means you can download videos, play online games, skype with your extended family, etc. Even with a reasonable good connection sometimes it feels like it needs a boost to go faster.

Of course the speed of Internet connection depends on your network capabilities, the service your provider offers, and on your computer capabilities as well. Surely if you have a dial-up connection, it will be way slower than a broadband. Broadband connections differ from each other too. DSL download speeds vary from 1.5 to 9 Mbps. Cable modems speed often depends on how many people share the connection.

When you need to download large files, like movies for example, you'll probably become interested in the methods to boost download speed on Mac.

Increase download speed on Mac with Folx

Folx is one of the most popular download managers for Mac OS. It helps achieve the higher speed thanks to splitting the downloads in threads and fetching them from multiple sources at a time. Free Folx splits the downloads in up to two threads, while Folx Pro allows you to split the downloads in up to 20 threads.

Here is how to maximize download speed on Mac with Folx:

1. Download and install the free app.
2. Open Folx and add a download task to it. The download will be split in threads automatically
3. Enjoy the faster downloads on Mac

Folx PRO also has a rich feature list to add to lightning fast downloading. Additionally to download manager it is also a torrent client.

Use Firefox Add-on

DownThemAll! is an add-on for Firefox, which makes the browser a download manager, that is quite the competition to other downloaders. This add-on supports metalinks and allows adding mirrors manually to download a file from different servers.

JDownloader

With this downloader you'll need to specify the number of connections for downloading files. As we mentioned before the number of connections is directly connected to the downloading speed.

We would also like to share some tips with you that should hopefully help boost the download speed on Mac.

Don't download too many files at a time.

It is easy to forget that you started tenth download while nine others are still active. However it affects the download speed tremendously. Try pausing less urgent downloads to dedicate more traffic to the most important files.

Check your ISP

Make sure to check the max download and upload bandwidths allowed by your ISP. Of course the torrent downloading speed won't go over what is set up by the ISP. Use bandwidth tester to see what you have and how to increase it. You can use speed.io or DSLReports included in the speed test of uTorrent.

Limit your upload rate

Sharing is caring, and peer-to-peer connection is all about that. But an unlimited setting on upload affects your downloading too. It is a good idea to set your torrent client upload rate to about 80% of your maximum upload speed. Also try to play with your upload speeds – set the speed high initially and then gradually lower it towards the middle of the download. Pay attention to speed units – they can either be kilobits per second (kb/sec) or kilobytes per second (kB/sec). 1 kilobyte = 8 kilobit.

Do you know of more tips and tricks for increasing the download speed? Would you mind sharing in the comments below and help others out?