Growl is a deprecated global notification system and pop-up notification implementation for the macOS (formerly Mac OS X) and Windows operating systems. It was first released in 2004 and was developed by a team led by Christopher Forsythe. The software allowed applications to display small notifications about events that might be important to the user, such as "Download Finished" or the name of the current iTunes track.
Overview
Growl functioned as a centralized notification aggregator. Rather than each application implementing its own notification interface, applications could use the Growl API to send notifications through a single, unified system. This approach allowed users to fully control how and when notifications appeared, while application developers could spend less time building notification features and Growl developers could focus on the usability of the notification presentation itself.
The software was installed as a preference pane added to the Mac OS X System Preferences. From this pane, users could enable or disable notifications for specific applications or for specific notification types within each application. Growl shipped with multiple display plugins, offering users different visual styles for presenting notifications. These plugins included visual display options as well as the ability to forward notifications via email, SMS, or push notifications. Additional third-party plugins and scripts extended Growl to work with applications such as iChat, Mail, Thunderbird, Safari, and iTunes.
Development History
Growl was originally called "GlobalNotificationsCenter" before being renamed to Growl—a reference to the noise a dog makes—because the developers felt the original name was too technical. The project began in 2004 as a proof-of-concept and grew into a widely used utility on the Mac platform.
Growl was written primarily in Objective-C. The Growl API included bindings for developers using the Objective-C, C, Perl, Python, Tcl, AppleScript, Java, and Ruby programming languages.
Windows Version
A version of Growl was also developed for Windows, supporting Windows XP and later versions. The Windows edition provided similar functionality, allowing applications to display customizable desktop notifications. It could be used with various add-ons to field notifications for websites, applications, and system events, and it supported forwarding messages to other machines.
Integration with Notification Center
Growl could be used in conjunction with Apple's Notification Center, which was introduced in Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and later versions. Growl 2.0, released in 2012, added integration with Notification Center on OS X and iOS.
Adobe Installation Controversy
Growl gained some notoriety when it was discovered that certain applications, including Adobe Creative Suite 5, installed Growl on users' systems without explicit permission. Adobe subsequently published a blog post apologizing for the practice and stated that it was "actively working to mitigate the problem." Adobe also added a knowledge base article explaining what notifications CS5 sent and how to remove Growl.
Discontinuation
Growl was eventually deprecated. The final stable release, version 2.1.3, was published on 29 October 2013. The software was retired as Apple's built-in Notification Center became the standard notification mechanism on macOS. Growl's license was proprietary commercial software, and its official website was growl.info.
