Growl
Growl is a free, third-party notification system for macOS that acts as a universal dispatcher for application alerts. Rather than relying solely on macOS's built-in Notification Center, Growl lets hundreds of supporting applications send customizable pop-up notifications to the user. These can be alerts for instant messages received, downloads completed, music track changes, build system notifications, or any action an application needs to announce. Users can configure notification styles, screen position, duration, opacity and other display properties through system preferences. Growl was particularly popular among developers, power users and professional workers who needed precise control over notification behavior and appearance.
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1 suggestionA native Apple Silicon build of Growl (Growl Fork) is already available and has been confirmed running natively on M-series Macs. The search results show verified Mach-O arm64 binaries in circulation as of early 2026. If you are still running the legacy Growl 2.1.4 (last released in 2013), it will not work on modern macOS versions due to deprecated Carbon APIs, and it will fail entirely once Apple removes Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 (September 2028). Download the latest Growl Fork from the official GitHub releases page, drag Growl.app to /Applications, launch it once to grant Accessibility permissions via System Settings, and test with a simple growlnotify command in Terminal. The native build is significantly more efficient, with lower CPU and memory usage, faster notification dispatch, and better compatibility across all macOS versions and hardware architectures.
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