Every evening, for the past 3 nights, there is a little popup that comes on my desktop. It says it's a program called Growl and it wants to download an update. Is that part of some Mac application? I have never heard of it before. I don't have much on my Mac besides the programs that came with it. Only Adium, Second Life, and Gimp.
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Growl?
- Thread starter ann-yes
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I'm seeing it too -- It looks like it may have been installed either with DropBox or Firefox 3. There is a Growl system prefs pane now as well.
Does anyone know if it's required for Firefox or DropBox? I'd really rather not have another app cluttering up my system if it's not necessary.
Does anyone know if it's required for Firefox or DropBox? I'd really rather not have another app cluttering up my system if it's not necessary.
Well, that would make sense if I had adium on my computer. Sounds like a lot of apps will install it. I guess it's not harmful but it's a little weird to see a pop-up all of a sudden from an app you've never heard of.
Agreed, and I think its the case that Growl is harmless -- just a souped-up Notification system that integrates with OS X.
Dropbox uses it. However its not required. You could uninstall it without a problem.
Growl is awesome, using the music video setting with Adium makes sense, instead of looking in the boxes it just pops up much bigger. Truly one of the best freeaps (alongside Adium) for the Mac. Shocked that more of our expereinced members haven't commented on it.
Growl was one of the first things I installed on my Mac Mini, its a really neat little app, so many applications plug into it its really a must have if you want to be notified of what's going on.
Growl = clutch
It's fairly customizable and works with a decent amount of applications. There is a plugin for it to work with Safari.
It's fairly customizable and works with a decent amount of applications. There is a plugin for it to work with Safari.
I just got a notification of a Growl update. I downloaded and tried to install, and got an error. So despite the fact that everyone seems to love it, it definitely has its flaws.
I can't help but notice that you only name one flaw, which nobody else seems to have. That's hardly a flaw but more like a one-time problem since it has nothing to do with its functionality?
Well given that the whole point of the thing seems to be notification of updates, I do find it rather ironic that it can't update itself. The only thing it's done for me so far is notify me of an update that doesn't work.
Get rid of Growl or get rid of the pop up?
You can disable popups under the Growl Preference Pane in System Preferences
This is how you completely remove it from the system.
Been using Growl for over a year now, its good, useful, well worth keeping. There does seem to be something wrong with the latest update, I keep getting a notification that an update is available to download when I have already downloaded and installed it. Hopefully this will be sorted out soon.
The new updated version (1.1.4) serves to fix the problem that said in earlier versions "Installation Failed" upon the first attempt. So, DL 1.1.4 and all should be fine.
All of the third party applications that use it are really intuitive, but I find the functionality with Apple apps to be a little difficulty to initially set-up. After that set-up, though, it's great. Growlmail is especially useful, IMO.
All of the third party applications that use it are really intuitive, but I find the functionality with Apple apps to be a little difficulty to initially set-up. After that set-up, though, it's great. Growlmail is especially useful, IMO.