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what is "Growl"

C

cane creek

macrumors member
Original poster
i was just using my mac pro today what i got a pop-up from the top right corner saying "A Growl 1.2 update is available"

im thinking "Growl what the hell is that ?"

I use my Mac pro to produce music so the less third party apps i have on my machine the better.

I was just going to uninstall Growl as i have no idea what it is , then thought i better ask here first in case its something that came with Snow leopard that i need.

I did install an App yesterday called "Dropbox" , maybe Growl came with that ?
 
Growl is a third party program, it sometimes comes bundled with other third party programs.

It's a pretty nice program, it's a universal notifier, a lot of common mac programs can use it, it pops up notifications, like, IM received, email received, download completed, transfer completed, all sorts of things. You can find in in system preferences.

(it's prefectly safe to uninstall btw)
 
Thanks for the speedy replay , i think ill uninstall it then as i don't want my Mac bogged down with lots of silly little app's like PC's i've had in the past.
 
It's only a 3 meg file - the benefits of getting instant notifications is well worth the negligible effect it will have on your system.

To show you, run Activity Monitor and look for the GrowlHelper app. On my system, it's using 0.0% of the CPU (basically under .1%)

I'd recommend keeping it.
 
GoKyu said:
It's only a 3 meg file - the benefits of getting instant notifications is well worth the negligible effect it will have on your system.

To show you, run Activity Monitor and look for the GrowlHelper app. On my system, it's using 0.0% of the CPU (basically under .1%)

I'd recommend keeping it.
Click to expand...

too late i've already uninstalled it lol
 
GoKyu said:
Doesn't mean you can't reinstall it 🙂

www.growl.info 😉
Click to expand...

Like i said earlier i produce music on my Mac and have no interest having other 3rd party software installed on it so unless Growl told me i had music software updates available which i gather it doesn't then it is of no use to me lol , however thanks for the replys 😀
 
Sorry to wake this thread from the dead, but... I didn't intend to install this application, and it concerns me that I have installed this app without intending to install it.

Can someone tell me what sort of app it was probably bundled with when I installed it? I have only installed maybe ten to fifteen apps other than the apps that come with OS X.

Is it like adware or something?

Also, if I am going to keep it, what do I do with it?
 
Scottsdale said:
Sorry to wake this thread from the dead, but... I didn't intend to install this application, and it concerns me that I have installed this app without intending to install it.

Can someone tell me what sort of app it was probably bundled with when I installed it? I have only installed maybe ten to fifteen apps other than the apps that come with OS X.

Is it like adware or something?

Also, if I am going to keep it, what do I do with it?
Click to expand...

Growl came with Dropbox for me when I installed that a few weeks ago.
I find it quite useful when it pops up. Lets me know when downloads and uploads are complete, I'm sure it does other useful things for other people.
And you don't need to do anything with it. It will look after itself.
 
mickbab said:
Growl came with Dropbox for me when I installed that a few weeks ago.
I find it quite useful when it pops up. Lets me know when downloads and uploads are complete, I'm sure it does other useful things for other people.
And you don't need to do anything with it. It will look after itself.
Click to expand...

Okay, that's how I got it. It would be better if Dropbox would tell us that, or perhaps it did and I failed to read!

Thanks for the information!
 
mickbab said:
And you don't need to do anything with it. It will look after itself.
Click to expand...
That unfortunately is not true. Growl should be low maintenance and it should look after itself but it doesn't. The problem lies in the fact that Growl is not a centralised system. It simply displays any notification on your screen in a separate window. If you have 30 notifications you'll end up with 30 windows. If you go with the default settings you'll also end up with notifications for every minor detail. There is no need to inform you of every little detail, it can get really really annoying. You need to configure Growl and keep on configuring it with every new application you install to make sure Growl only notifies you of sensible things, the things you want to be notified about. Growl therefore is a very high maintenance application.

@scotssdale: mostly the installer won't notify you about it but you can configure it by using the "advanced" button.
 
dyn said:
Growl therefore is a very high maintenance application.
Click to expand...

I installed Growl sometime in 2007. I think I've adjusted the preferences maybe twice since I've gotten it. I wouldn't consider Growl high-maintenance at all, and am curious as to why you seem to be overloaded with notifications.
 
Quite easy: you have to configure Growl whether you want to or not. It detects every application that has Growl support and enables it. It actually enables all of the possible notifications the application supports. That means the users has to configure those notifications for each individual application. When installing a new application with Growl support you need to do that again. In some applications you can do this in their own settings but in most you'll have to do this in the Growl prefpane. Having all notifications is not always necessary or wanted.

I actually annoyed the hell out of some guy who was using Colloquy with Growl with the default settings. I kept on highlighting him which filled his screen with Growl notifications 🙂 I also had a colleague who used Adium as his XMPP client and he too used it with Growl and left it on defaults. Each morning we received quite some messages via XMPP. In his case the notifications filled his 23" ACD. He used to grab some coffee to allow the notifications to die out. After a couple of days he got annoyed by it and configured Growl to not display notifications for new IM messages.

That's why I call Growl high-maintenance. Growl is an opt-out application: you have to disable everything you don't want. It should have been an opt-in application: you have to enable everything you want to be notified about. The opt-in system would have made it a low-maintenance application because you don't have to recheck Growl to see whether you need to disable anything so you won't be swarmed by notifications. Also, it lacks a centralised notifications centre. This would also take away the annoyance of Growl taking over your screen (something like a scrollable list would do perfect). And last but not least: Growl adds applications automatically after you've started them, not everything at once. It would have been better if you either could add the applications manually to the list or if it has some wizard that scans your drive for applications and add those to Growl. Either way, we need more control over Growl to make it low-maintenance.
 
I installed it today (came with Adium, it did ask me to install it), and I like it alot, it was exactly what I was looking for. I like how it displays every song that starts playing on the last.fm app. I usually want to know the name but am too lazy to open iTunes or the last.fm app.
 
GoKyu said:
It's only a 3 meg file - the benefits of getting instant notifications is well worth the negligible effect it will have on your system.

To show you, run Activity Monitor and look for the GrowlHelper app. On my system, it's using 0.0% of the CPU (basically under .1%)

I'd recommend keeping it.
Click to expand...

It's not just "3 meg" it's 17 meg.
 
cane creek said:
i was just using my mac pro today what i got a pop-up from the top right corner saying "A Growl 1.2 update is available"
Click to expand...

Ironically it was a growl notification that made you uninstall growl. If you had become reliant on the notifications growl provides you're now without them. If you don't care about the notifications, then it really doesn't matter.
 
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