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| Growl | |
|---|---|
 | |
Screenshot  Growl's "General" preferences inSystem Preferences running onMac OS X Leopard. | |
| Developer | The Growl team led by Christopher Forsythe |
| Initial release | 2004 |
| Stable release | 2.1.3 / 29 October 2013; 12 years ago (2013-10-29) |
| Written in | Objective-C |
| Operating system | Mac OS X,Windows XP or later |
| Platform | Macintosh,Windows |
| Type | Notification system |
| License | Proprietarycommercial software |
| Website | growl |
Growl is a deprecated[1] globalnotification system andpop-up notification implementation for theMac OS X andWindows[2]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'sNotification Center that is included in Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and higher.[3][4]
Growl is installed as apreference pane added to the Mac OS XSystem 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 currentiTunes track. The software comes with multiple displayplugins, 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.[5] Additional third-party plugins orscripts exist to add Growl notifications toiChat,Mail,Thunderbird,Safari, andiTunes.
Application developers may make use of the GrowlAPI to send notifications to their users. Growl includesbindings for developers who use theObjective-C,C,Perl,Python,Tcl,AppleScript,Java, andRuby programming languages.
The Growl website listed applications that install Growl without the user's permission, includingAdobe Creative Suite 5.[6] Adobe published a blog post apologizing for installing Growl on users' systems without permission, and says that they are "actively working to mitigate the problem".[7] Adobe added an article to their knowledge base explaining what notifications CS5 sends and how to remove Growl.[8]
