Mac App Review: Growl

I have been using Growl since I bought my Mac. Growl is a cool notification application for OS X. It has helped me a lot in keeping alerted whether it be a new email, software update or new tweets. Growl has been a staple for other developers as well since its API's are used by them in integrating alerts on their own applications. It's not just a simple notification system on OS X. It's a sleek, very well thought of alert that has themes and animations.

Growl has its own preset themes available after you download the application from the Mac App Store. What I actually did not know was that I can download themes and use them too for my alerts. Some of the themes are available on Growl's website. While searching for other themes, I came across this post enumerating "36+ Sweet Growl Styles to Keep Your Notifications Snappy." There are a lot of styles to choose from and from that post my personal favorites are Portal Growl Style, AirMail Classic and Basics 1.3. Another cool thing with Growl is that I can still customize what type of notification will be displayed for an action available to an application -- one good example is Twitter. Inside Growl's preferences, Twitter's available actions are Direct Messages, Mentions and Timeline. So with this, you can set Portal Growl Style for Direct Messages, AirMail for Mentions and Basics 1.3 for Timeline. If you want to customize further you can set how the styles stay on screen, its priority and what sound it produces when it displays the alerts. Pretty cool huh?!

I wonder though how Growl will favor with the upcoming notification system from the latest Mac OS Mountain Lion. The latest notification system from Mountain Lion takes its inspiration from iOS 5.0's alert system and its pretty similar to how Growl functions now. What's different though is the level of customization like what I have shared above. I hope the Growl developers innovate further and enhance the user experience. I totally love the transitions and styled themes that they offer, maybe they can build on that.

Here are some snapshots of Growl's preferences on my Mac.

Growl Preference Panel

My applications that utilize Growl

Fully customizable settings from Display Style to Sound

Available themes in Growl

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Growl is available on the Mac App Store for $1.99. Its other versions are available on its website for free.