Growl – Useful notifications that you control

There is a new version of the Growl notification system available with enhanced support for OS X 10.5 Leopard and other fixes. It doesn’t claim full Leopard compatibility but I’ve had no problems using all the functions on my Leopard system.

Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X: it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications.

Notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you’re already in.

Growl notifications can be configured to appear as spoken notifications, email messages, or most commonly viewed on the screen with or without accompanying sound effects. Here’s a display of some notifications on my screen:

Some of the advantages of Growl are:

• All the programs that use it will use the same form of notification, unless you configure them to be different. So if you prefer spoken, emailed, or large print notifications you only have one place to set it up.
• Visual notifications are all in the same form, so it’s easy to train your eye to know where the most important information is. This means less confusion for low vision users.
• Growl works with many popular OS X programs, and there are Growl extras to get it to function with standard programs like iTunes and Mail.app and to announce when hardware is connected and disconnected.
• If you want a visual style not included with Growl they have a style archive, or you can even design your own style if you know how to write HTML!

I designed a Growl style for myself using large print and enlarged icons so it’s easier for me to read. You can download EasyView. Just unzip and double-click on the file to install it, once you have Growl installed.

You can see other programs that ATMac has reviewed which use Growl notifications by looking at the growl notifications tag.

- Ricky Buchanan