Growl is a comprehensive notification system for Mac OS X and Windows operating systems. Growl for Windows lets you get notifications about events as they happen. Some of the example are: when files finish downloading, new email notification, your friends come online, and more. When these events happen, Growl can show you a visual alert, or an audio alert, or both. Apart from that, clicking on notifications perform same action as it would have done in original application.
Applications can use Growl for Windows to display notifications concerning events which the user deems imperative, in a consistent method. This allows users to fully be in charge of their notifications; request developers to spend little occasion creating notifications, and Growl developers to deliberate on the usability of notifications.
How to Use Growl in Windows:
It is quite easy to use Growl for Windows.
- First you install this software. It will stay in your system tray, and you can configure it to automatically start whenever your computer starts.
- Then you can configure applications in it about which you want to be notified. When you open Growl for Windows, you will see names of all applications for which Growl can handle notifications. Click on any application, and it will show you all possible notifications of that application in center pane. You can choose to take specific actions for different notifications, or just enable all notifications and be alerted in same way.
- After this, you can choose how to display notifications under “Display” section.
- That’s it. Now Growl for Windows is fully configured, and you will start getting all the notifications through Growl.
Some other notification related software we reviewed earlier include: Gmail desktop notifier, EmailTray, free SMS alerts for stocks, and task reminder software.
Some of the features of Growl for Windows:
History of Notifications: Growl for Windows can show you history of all the notifications that Growl captured. It can even display the notification history for each application separately. You can get all this information in “History” section.
Security: Growl for Windows allows numerous passwords to be configured. When an application wants to roll or send notification, it must provide an applicable password to prevent unwanted notification from spamming the user local applications may be exempt from this obligation. By allowingmany passwords to be configured, the consumer can give unique passwords to different application or different group of applications.
Forwarding of Notifications to Other Computers: Growl also allows forwarding notifications to other devices or computers. This is one of the best feature of Growl, as you can keep track of events happening on one computer from another computer.
Performing Actions when clicking on Notifications: Applications that send Growl notifications can demand to be notified when the notification is clicked. For example, if your email client notifies you that an original mail communication has arrived, clicking on the announcement could unlock the email message. Same action can happen when you click on that notification via Growl.
Notifications while you are Away: You can also configure Growl to show all the notifications that happened while you were away from your computer.
Before I researched about Growl, I had a perception that Growl for windows could be quite a complicated application to manage and configure. However, after reading about it thoroughly, I am quite surprised how easy and intuitive it has been designed. And it is basically endless – all the new applications that come up can choose Growl as their notification system ensuring that you get all the notifications in a consistent manner from one central application.
You can download Growl for Windows here. And here is a detailed installation and setup guide for Growl.
