Growl (software)
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 Growl's "General" preferences in System Preferences running on Mac OS X Leopard. |
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| Developer(s) | The Growl team led by Christopher Forsythe |
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| Stable release | 1.3.3 / 26 January 2012 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X, Windows XP or later |
| Platform | Macintosh, Windows |
| Type | Notification system |
| License | BSD |
| Website | http://growl.info/ |
Growl is a global notification system for the Mac OS X and Windows[1] operating systems. Applications can use Growl to display small notifications about events which the user deems important, in a consistent manner. This allows users to fully control their notifications, application developers to spend little time creating notifications, and Growl developers to concentrate on the usability of notifications.
Growl installs itself as a preference pane added to the Mac OS X System Preferences. This pane enables and disables Growl's notifications for certain applications entirely, or selects specific notifications for each application.
Applications register a "ticket" with Growl, then send arbitrary notifications which Growl receives and displays. Each notification provides some information, such as: "Download finished," or the name of the current iTunes track. Users can customize the display and turn notifications on and off.
Growl includes bindings for developers who use the Objective-C, C, Perl, Python, Tcl, AppleScript, Java, and Ruby programming languages, and comes with multiple "display plugins," providing different styles for presenting the notifications. Display plugins include visual styles as well as the ability to send notifications via email, SMS, or push notifications.[2]
The Growl Project website has a list of applications that support Growl, either inherently or through add-ons.
Plugins or scripts exist to add Growl notifications to iChat, Mail, Thunderbird, Safari, and iTunes (GrowlTunes).
The Growl website lists applications that install Growl without the user's permission. Adobe Creative Suite 5 is one of them. 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”.[3] Adobe has an article in their knowledge base explaining what notifications CS5 sends and how to remove Growl.[4]
As of Growl 1.3, Growl is available for purchase in the App Store and is no longer a free download. Previous versions remain available at no charge. The source code for all versions of Growl, including 1.3 and later versions, is available as well.
[edit] References
- ^ "Growl for Windows". Growl for Windows. http://www.growlforwindows.com/. Retrieved 2010-05-29.
- ^ "Howl - a Growl app for iPhone and iPad". Tanka Tech. http://howlapp.com/. Retrieved 2010-06-08.
- ^ "Growl Installation with Adobe CS5". Adobe. http://blogs.adobe.com/oobe/2010/05/growl_installation_with_adobe.html. Retrieved 2010-10-29.
- ^ "Disabling Growl notifications in Adobe Creative Suite 5 applications"
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Growl (software) |
- Growl homepage
- Chris Forsythe and Growl, CocoaRadio, 5 June 2006
- Interview with Chris Forsythe of Adium and Growl, OSNews, 9 August 2006
- Mumbles Project – a Growl-inspired notification-application for Linux
