HardwareGrowler
HardwareGrowler is a system monitoring utility that provides real-time notifications about hardware and network events on macOS. It alerts users when USB, Thunderbolt, FireWire, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices connect or disconnect, monitors volume mounting and unmounting, tracks power adapter connections, and notifies of network IP address changes. Originally bundled with the Growl notification system, it was later released as a standalone app on the Mac App Store. It is popular with power users and system administrators who need visibility into hardware changes and network connectivity events.
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1 suggestionHardwareGrowler has been abandoned—the Growl project it originated from was officially retired, the app is no longer available on the Mac App Store, and there is no native Apple Silicon build. The latest Intel-only release (version 2.2) continues to run under Rosetta 2 today, but Apple will remove Rosetta support in macOS 28 (September 2028), at which point this app will stop launching entirely. The code remains on GitHub but is no longer maintained. No direct equivalent has emerged as a maintained replacement; users seeking similar functionality may need to cobble together a combination of system-level tools. macOS itself provides some hardware event logging via Console and System Log, and tools like fswatch or log stream can monitor certain system events from the command line, but these require scripting knowledge and lack the user-friendly notification interface HardwareGrowler provided. If you rely on this app, begin planning a migration away from it now—either by writing custom monitoring scripts, exploring terminal-based alternatives, or accepting that some real-time hardware event visibility will be lost after macOS 28 arrives in September 2028.
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