Growl (software)

Growl is a global notification system and pop-up notification implementation for the Mac OS X and Windows[1] operating systems. Applications can use Growl to display small notifications about events which may be important to the user. This software allows users to fully control their notifications, while allowing application developers to spend less time creating notifications and Growl developers to concentrate on the usability of notifications. Growl can be used in conjunction with Apple's Notification Center that is included in Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and higher.[2][3]

Growl
Screenshot
Growl Pref Pane screenshot
Growl's "General" preferences in System Preferences running on Mac OS X Leopard.
Developer(s)The Growl team led by Christopher Forsythe
Stable release
2.1.3 / 29 October 2013 (2013-10-29)
Written inObjective-C
Operating systemMac OS X, Windows XP or later
PlatformMacintosh, Windows
TypeNotification system
LicenseProprietary commercial software
Websitegrowl.info

Details

Growl is installed as a preference pane added to the Mac OS X System Preferences. This pane may be used to enable and disable Growl's notifications for specific applications or specific notifications for each application. Each notification provides some information, such as "Download Finished" or the name of the current iTunes track. The software comes with multiple display plugins, providing the user with different style options for presenting the notifications. Display plugins include visual styles as well as the ability to send notifications via email, SMS, or push notifications.[4] Additional third-party plugins or scripts exist to add Growl notifications to iChat, Mail, Thunderbird, Safari, and iTunes.

Application developers may make use of the Growl API to send notifications to their users. Growl includes bindings for developers who use the Objective-C, C, Perl, Python, Tcl, AppleScript, Java, and Ruby programming languages.

Controversies

The Growl website lists applications that install Growl without the user's permission, including Adobe Creative Suite 5. Adobe has published a blog post apologizing for installing Growl on users' systems without permission, and says that they are "actively working to mitigate the problem".[5] Adobe has an article in their knowledge base explaining what notifications CS5 sends and how to remove Growl.[6]

See also

References
  1. "Growl for Windows". Growl for Windows. Retrieved 29 May 2010.
  2. "Hands-on: Growl 2.0 integrates with Notification Center on OS X, iOS". Ars Technica.
  3. "Quick Tip: Growl vs. Notification Center". Computer Skills Tuts+.
  4. "Howl - a Growl app for iPhone and iPad". Tanka Tech. Archived from the original on 13 March 2010. Retrieved 8 June 2010.
  5. "Growl Installation with Adobe CS5". Adobe. Retrieved 29 October 2010.
  6. "Disabling Growl notifications in Adobe Creative Suite 5 applications". adobe.com.
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