The end of Growl: the ancestor of the message center breaks down

The Growl notification system is officially discontinued – after 17 years. Growl brought status messages from various programs in a centralized, flexible and clear way to the user’s screen, initially only on Mac, then also on Windows PC. What has long been a matter of course in common operating systems was revolutionary in early 2004 and is likely to have significantly impacted the design and implementation of system-wide message centers.

Flexible notifications

With Apple’s integration of a notification center (“Notification Center”) into Mac OS X or macOS, the demise of Growl was already in sight in 2012, says developer Chris Forsythe. He originally wanted to call Growl (German for “growl”) “Global Notifications Center”, but at the time he thought it was “too geeky” and so chose the unusual name.

Before Growl, developers had to implement their own “very rudimentary windows” for notifications or rely on other “ugliness” that “nobody liked,” says Forsythe. Growl’s integration into the Adium instant messaging client and the IRC Colloquy client quickly made the tool popular with users, who were notified of the new messages and were able to tailor the display to their preferences. Forsythe notes that he’s not sure there ever was a “decent notification system” in macOS, iOS, Android and others without Growl.

Notification Center as part of the system

Developers have long since moved into Apple’s message center, Forsythe continues. The change in the architecture of the Mac processor from x86 to ARM, which has just begun, has also helped put the open source project into hibernation right now, especially since there is no longer a “clear path” for further improvements.

As long as software developed for Intel processors can still run on the Mac, Growl will continue to work, but now without support. The code is on Github. Forsythe writes that developers who have built Growl into their programs should remove the framework.

(lbe)