Does your Mac talk back to you? Sure. There are alerts and pop ups from time to time. Incoming email has a distinct sound. Mostly the Mac is a rather quiet, unassuming beast devoid of much interaction with the users. The Mac does what we tell it to do. But there are apps that tell us so much more.
User Friendly Growls
Growl the app is a free system notification for your Mac. Install it and it gives you notifications in discreet pop up windows (which you control). Many Mac apps support Growl notifications so there isn’t much to do once you install it and choose a theme.
The idea behind Growl is to give you a centralized notification system. Instead of alerts here, badges there, beeps over there, and obscure pop ups where you don’t want, Growl puts it all in a single location (which you control).
The initial setup may seem a bit complex, but there’s not much you need to beyond the basics.
General Settings give you options to display a Growl icon in the Menubar, set up a hotspot for notifications, and determine how much time to leave a Growl message on the screen.
Applications that can utilize growl are many and some come with individual configurations.
The most fun with setting up Growl comes in the Display Options pane. You ca make Growl gaudy and noisy, or discreet and pleasant.
Not bad for free, huh?
If you like Growl you may consider OmniGrowl which adds more notification options for more apps. Growl is free. OmniGrowl is merely inexpensive. There’s even a GrowlVoice which works with your Google Voice account.
Your Mac notifications will never be the same.