Growl (software)

Growl was a notification system for macOS. It allowed applications to send notifications to the user in a standardized and unobtrusive way. These notifications, displayed as small pop-up windows, could inform the user about a variety of events, such as new emails, instant messages, software updates, or system alerts.

Functionally, Growl acted as a central hub for notifications. Applications that wished to send a notification would register with Growl and then send their notification data. Growl would then handle the display of the notification according to the user's preferences.

Users could configure Growl's behavior in several ways. They could choose different styles for the notification windows, customize the duration for which notifications were displayed, and even disable notifications from specific applications. This level of customization gave users fine-grained control over how they were alerted to events on their computer.

Growl's functionality was eventually superseded by Apple's own notification system, Notification Center, which was introduced with OS X Mountain Lion. While Growl is no longer actively maintained and is largely obsolete, it served as an influential precursor to the modern notification systems found in macOS and other operating systems. Its legacy lies in popularizing the concept of centralized, customizable application notifications.