Growl (Software)

Growl is a global notification system for Mac OS X. programs can inform the user via Growl about events like new emails or chat messages, get a downloaded file or the currently playing song. Software developers with Growl interfaces for programming Objective- C, C, Perl, Python, Tcl, AppleScript, Java, and Ruby.

The user can fully configure which messages should be displayed. Also, different levels of urgency are possible, so that about the current track is displayed for a few seconds while birthday reminders as long as remain on the screen until the user removes them. For the notifications several display styles are available.

Since version 1.3 the program is commercially available through the Mac App Store, as the project according to the developers could not otherwise be developed. However, the source code of Growl 1.3 is still available for free.

In 2008, a version of Growl for Windows was presented. This is developed independently of the Mac version, and differs in the version number and some skills.

Programs

On the Growl website has more than 200 programs are listed that support Growl, including about Opera, Skype or VLC media player. For some other programs - including Mozilla Firefox, iTunes or Apple Mail - are plugins available, retrofit the support Growl.