With the end of the year growing close, the nights growing long, and a foot of snow paralyzing a completely unprepared Seattle, our thoughts here at Make Mac Work turn to all the gifts we’ve received this year to make our jobs easier.

So we’ve collected some of our favorite free tools for Macintosh administration. We feel enormously lucky to have received these gifts from their developers, and we’re sharing them here in the spirit of giving.

Some of these utilities we’ve already reviewed, some we’re reviewing in the upcoming months, some of them we use every day, while some we only tinker with. But every single one of these applications is highly recommended, and completely free.

AirRadar:

There are many wireless scanners for Macintosh, but none as customizable or pleasant to use as AirRadar, Koingo Software’s beautifully-designed and profoundly Mac-like little application.

Flame:

More a proof-of-concept that a full-fledged application, Flame is nonetheless invaluable for tracking down unsanctioned Bonjour sharing on your network. Simple, functional, and free.

FSEventer:

Fern Lightning’s FSEventer doesn’t just log file system changes, it charts them graphically in real time. Wonderful for understanding the systems you’re supposed to keep running, and the horrible things that software does to them.

Keychain Minder:

In environments where Active Directory and Keychain passwords get out of sync, Keychain Minder helps users keep everything straight, and minimizes confused support calls. From the great folks at AFP548.

Lingon:

Peter Borg’s handy front-end for Leopard’s complex launchd doesn’t make building system daemons easier, but it does make it faster. We’ve reviewed Lingon before, and we’ve only used (and liked) it more since then.

Password Expiration Checker:

If you’ve got Macs bound to Active Directory, this little AppleScript can be set as a login item, warning users that their AD password is set to expire. It may only do one thing, but Peter Bukowinski’s Password Expiration Checker does one thing that’s badly needed.

QuotaMonitorMenu:

Great for users new to Portable Home Directory environments, Adam Gerson’s QuotaMonitorMenu displays how much space their account has left on the server. Another single-feature utility that should have come with the operating system.

Suspicious Package:

By bringing the convenience of Leopard’s QuickLook to the arduous task of vetting software installers, Suspicious Package from Mothers’ Ruin Software manages to be both deeply geeky and extremely elegant.

Time Machine Perspective:

Pierce T. Wetter III hacked the open source disk space monitor GrandPerspective, tuning it to only find files Time Machine had backed up once. Time Machine Perspective helps prune backups of unwanted cruft, reclaiming valuable disk space.

Wireshark:

Despite it’s colorful GUI, Wireshark is anything but easy or friendly. Instead, this enormously popular Unix tool is the most powerful weapon in your network troubleshooting arsenal. Learning it could be the best gift you get yourself this year.

Special Thanks: Our friends Damien Barrett, Eddie Kelley, Jasson Lewellen, Aaron Robinson, Shayne Sandison, and Craig Swanson all helped compile this excellent holiday offering. Thanks to everyone, and we’ll see you all in the new year…