What Growl gives you, 'The User', above all the other ways an application can post an event on your screen, is that Growl lets you configure the event display independent of the application that send it. Just my 2 cents.Īpplications can use Growl to send event notifications to your screen (Download finished, Backup finished, New Articles in your News Reader, New Mail, Your power plug has come out, your power plug was inserted, you have 70% battery left, a disk was just plugged in, a disk has been unplugged, your iPod was just attached, etc.) But once you understand you can tell Growl to not display a specific event, or change its color/stlye, or make it disappear after a few seconds, then I think Growl becomes a tool rather than an annoyance. I think some people that try Growl, or have it installed for them as a side effect of installing another app do not understand that they are in control, and just see a bunch of new pop-up alerts that they need to keep dismissing (as may apps default to keeping their alert on the screen). And there are some plug-ins for Apple applications so they will use Growl (Safari, Mail, iTunes).Īnd the great thing is, you get to control what alerts you get, how they will look, and how long they will stay on the screen. Many apps you already have will be happy to use Growl. It can tell you when you a get a new IP address, when a network or external volume is mounted, it too can tell you about switching between AC power, battery, or running from UPS power.īut the number of 3rd party apps that will hook into Growl is huge. If you choose to run HardwareGrowler, it can tell when the following device interfaces make or break connections: Airport, Bluetooth, Firewire, or USB. The Growl download includes an 'Extra' called HardwareGrowler.

Plugging in the power cord comes up green and only stays on the screen a few seconds. I have the Growl Unplugged alerts set so that unplugging my power cord comes up in bold Orange and stays on the screen. UnPlugged to tell me when my laptop power cable has popped off

Growl app on mac