Growl: A Better Alert System for Your Mac

December 12th, 2006 at 2:00 PM - Tips by Jeff Gamet

There are so many things your Mac wants to tell you - if only you would let it. With a little help from Growl, you can free your Macis inner voice and let it keep you appraised of all kinds of interesting things it is up to.

Growl works by intercepting application notifications. Whenever it picks up a notification, it quickly displays the information for you. Applications need to be Growl-aware for this to work, but for applications like Mail that arenit, other developers have stepped in and crafted plug-ins that send Growl notifications.

For example, I use Mail and SpamSieve to process all of my email messages. SpamSieve is Growl-aware, so I always get a quick pop up window every time new non-spam messages are delivered to Mail. That saves me from checking Mail only to find that all I have are junk mail messages.

I also use Growl to tell me when contacts in iChatis Buddy List come online or go away. That way I can keep my Buddy List window in the Dock instead of on my Desktop.

Check out the list of Growl-aware applications. Odds are youill find something thatis useful for you. And everyone can appreciate the price, too: Itis free.

Even though Growl is a no-cost application, that doesnit mean it didnit take any time and effort to develop. If you find Growl useful, make a donation.

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