Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) has reached version 4.0, adding almost two dozen new features, and double that amount in changes and bug fixes. The freeware torrent client is the most popular of its kind for Mac, having been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times here on Softpedia.

Vuze is a powerful BitTorrent client that greatly extends the original python client's feature set. It can manage multiple downloads at once from a single window, or offer detailed real-time download statistics with export to XML, advanced download and seeding management rules, configuration and torrent creation wizards, embedded tracker for easy and automated hosting of your own files, PeerGuardian IP address filtering and web browser, and console UIs.

The multi-platform client makes transferring files via the BitTorrent protocol more stable, more usable and faster. One of the latest releases included a new split-window MyTorrents view with support for categories, and advanced downloading / seeding / queuing rules for powerful and automated torrent management, as well as a customizable user interface, seeding from read-only media, and significant reductions in resource usage. Vuze supports a total of 27 available languages, and sports a powerful plugin interface. But these are all things of the past. New additions in version 4.0, as far as “core” features are concerned, include:

- Async request processing for non-blocking tracker;
- Support HTTP redirects between http/https protocols in resource downloader;
- Add content to UPnP authentication dialogs;
- Support PList mods for app registration on OSX;
- Added http auth helper to support authenticated search templates/subscriptions;
- Fix built in RSS feed parser to handle Atom feeds;
- RSS based search templates;
- Light weight seeds to allow seeding of simple content such as subscriptions;
- Subscriptions;
- Added a “prefer UDP connections” option;
- Config options for max queued outgoing connections;
- Support dht:// URL protocol;
- Advanced options for specifying TCP select timeouts.

The program has undergone some graphical changes as well. Among the UI additions, the changelog reveals an added "Column Setup" icon to the iconbar, new console commands (“plugin” and “show”), a new SideBar (F7 to Hide/Show), a new ToolBar with hide-able text, while the Library now has Large and Small view modes. Additionally, an option to remove originator’s IP address from stored values has been included.

Vuze can be downloaded here for free. Come back with a comment if you liked the changes, or even if you didn't.