Miss the Old Growl? Now You Can Get it Back

**Anthony Bouchard** · 12-19-2011, 05:09 PM

Growl was recently released to the Mac App Store as a paid application.

Remember growl? It was a great notification system for Mac OS X that would show alerts whenever compatible applications had something that you needed to know. This included email, FTP transfer completion, Skype messages, and more. The best part was that Growl was a free application that was open source and could be downloaded or adjusted freely without any payment. That quickly changed in October of this year when Growl became a closed source paid application in the Mac App Store (download link here) for a cost of $1.99. The worst part was, it barely worked with anything anymore. The only upside? New skins, a beautiful new GUI (graphical user interface) and more settings. It was quite a sacrifice from the fun-to-use open source version.

If you were one of the Mac OS X Lion users who went to download Growl from the Web Site only to find that it wasn't compatible, you were probably angered. Add that to the fact that the Mac OS X Lion compatible version now had a price tag of $1.99 and was no longer open source in the Mac App Store, it only added more frustration. If you miss the old (free) Growl that you used on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, then you still have a chance to get it on your Mac OS X Lion machine – you can get it right now, for free thanks to a Mac OS X Snow Leopard port or Growl to Mac OS X Lion which has been dubbed Growl Fork. It's free; you can download it here.

I know what you're probably thinking, "But it's a paid application now, isn't that illegal?" The answer is no. The port has been completely made from the open source Mac OS X Snow Leopard version of growl to work on Mac OS X Lion. This means that it doesn't infringe on the closed source Growl that you can buy in the Mac App Store for $1.99. That is what makes it perfectly legal.

Installing it will bring you back to the good old days of Growl on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It puts a pane in your System Preferences application just like the original Growl, and it works with all of the applications that it used to work with that the new Growl in the Mac App Store does not work with. Growl Fork will continue to be an open source project as it already is and that means that it will continue to gain support for more applications and continue to get better with each update. Not to mention, it does more than the paid version in the Mac App Store. Unfortunately, Growl Fork doesn't have all of the skins and extra settings that the Mac App Store version has, but it will give you the notifications that you miss ever since you upgraded to Mac OS X Lion this year. It makes you wonder how the paid version in the Mac App Store will be able to compete in the upcoming months. Maybe converting to closed source was a big mistake on their part. Open source will always have the potential to go anywhere.

Will you be downloading Growl Fork and getting the original Growl back on your Mac OS X Lion machine? Tell us in the comments.

Sources OSX Daily

**mr117** · 12-19-2011, 05:57 PM

? Growl (the paid version) works fine on my iMac running Lion. Who says it is incompatible? It does not work on one of my apps, but that is the only issue I have seen so far.

**sziklassy** · 12-19-2011, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by mr117

? Growl (the paid version) works fine on my iMac running Lion. Who says it is incompatible? It does not work on one of my apps, but that is the only issue I have seen so far.

The OLD growl (free) was incompatible. It has been fixed.

**mr117** · 12-19-2011, 06:30 PM

"If you were one of the Mac OS X Lion users who went to download Growl from the Web Site only to find that it wasn't compatible, you were probably angered by the fact that it now had a price tag of $1.99 and was no longer open source."

I was responding to this statement in the article. I downloaded the paid version within the first week or two that it came out and it certainly worked (and works now) on my iMac/Lion.

I can see where the confusion comes from- the writer is referencing the old growl, NOT the paid version, as being incompatible. However, unless you parse the sentence to mean that the "Web Site" is not the App Store, the sentence is somewhat confusing. My error, but with that caveat.

**Anthony Bouchard** · 12-19-2011, 06:35 PM

Originally Posted by mr117

"If you were one of the Mac OS X Lion users who went to download Growl from the Web Site only to find that it wasn't compatible, you were probably angered by the fact that it now had a price tag of $1.99 and was no longer open source."

I was responding to this statement in the article. I downloaded the paid version within the first week or two that it came out and it certainly worked (and works now) on my iMac/Lion.

I can see where the confusion comes from- the writer is referencing the old growl, NOT the paid version, as being incompatible. However, unless you parse the sentence to mean that the "Web Site" is not the App Store, the sentence is somewhat confusing. My error, but with that caveat.

I edited it, and it should make more sense now. I'm not sure what was going through my mind at that moment.

**luvmytj** · 12-19-2011, 06:42 PM

I too am running Lion, and Growl has been working fine.

**Cer0** · 12-19-2011, 07:05 PM

Same here. I have had old growl working just fine for me on Lion.

**Anthony Bouchard** · 12-19-2011, 07:29 PM

Well from my understanding, the whole application is built with the Snow Leopard framework. It doesn't support Lion. It's like running something from XP on Windows 7. Sometimes it works but it just doesn't support it anymore. Some of the features of Growl from Snow Leopard don't work on Lion. I'm not sure exactly what because I'm not a Growl user, but I'm sure a Google Search could drum up some reasons.

**tsiv** · 12-21-2011, 03:50 PM

Since all apps now have to be 'sandboxed' for Lion, the new Growl has been rewritten to be able to function with sandboxed apps, is what I gather from reading their documentation.

**stevelasvegas** · 12-22-2011, 08:49 PM

I uninstalled Growl after upgrading to Lion. I don't know what Growl does and I don't miss any features that I am aware of not having Growl. Someone tell me when I would have seen something that Growl was responsible for. I would install this new Growl if I perceived any benefit. Maybe someone can enlighten me please.
Thanks

**Anthony Bouchard** · 12-25-2011, 10:41 AM

Originally Posted by stevelasvegas

I uninstalled Growl after upgrading to Lion. I don't know what Growl does and I don't miss any features that I am aware of not having Growl. Someone tell me when I would have seen something that Growl was responsible for. I would install this new Growl if I perceived any benefit. Maybe someone can enlighten me please.
Thanks

It's a notification system. If you don't use it then don't worry about it. Sound good?

**DirtyDan** · 12-26-2011, 01:17 AM

Growl has always seemed rather useless, even when it was free... why would anyone pay for it?

**Cer0** · 12-27-2011, 06:38 PM

Originally Posted by DirtyDan

Growl has always seemed rather useless, even when it was free... why would anyone pay for it?

Sort of agree.

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Thread: Miss the Old Growl? Now You Can Get it Back

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Growl was recently released to the Mac App Store as a paid application. Remember growl? It was a great notification system for Mac OS X that would show alerts whenever