Growl App Reviews

I thought Id support the developer but this pay version has been nothing but a disappointment. None of my apps are recognised except for AppFresh (the previous free version found all my apps). Not to mention my appearance settings always revert to Starwl every time I relaunch the bloody app. Save your money, this thing needs some serious work.

Given the high number of inital review of the Growl App Store indicating that it was not working I had decided to wait a few versions before buying it and supporting the developer(s), however I should clearly have waited more: none of the notifications I had setup work anymore, testing the displays in the App preferences panes itself doesnt even work. This version is simply useless to me. Its really disappointing to see such a nice App becoming worse in the process of transitioning from a free version to a paid one. One would have expected more professionalism, not less. I expect the developer to: - make sure the a new App version supports gracefully the setup of previously installed free versions - keep backward compatibility with old apps, if only to allow a smooth transition Unless that is done I will recommend all people I cross to stay away from the paid version.

Like a lot of the others who have written here, Ive been an avid user of Growl for years. Overall, I dont get the impression that much has changed. There have been a few minor improvements like the ability to save your Growl history and things like that but nothing truly amazing. I dont really have a problem with this though as Growl has always been good enough for me and I dont have an issue paying $6 for GrowlTunes, HardwareGrowler and Growl (although Im not super pleased at the prospect either). It seems like they released a Lion-only version on the App Store so that they could monetize it although I dont take great issue with that because Growl to date has been a pretty solid piece of software. The only thing that has really annoyed me is that Growl crashes or atleast doesnt automatically load when my computer resumes from sleep mode. This may seem like a tiny quirk but its something that bugs me since Im not able to view Growl notifications until I re-open the applicaiton. Ive read that this is fixed in 1.4 but since I dont have 1.4 in my hands yet and Ive been waiting for months, I do have to take off a star for this. Again, this is not to say the team doesnt deserve money because they do but I do wish that they could speed up their releases/bugfixes.

Strange for a "power user" to say this, but I just dont find Growl that useful. Its one of those apps I keep trying to appreciate. Ive had it installed for years, and periodically I dive into the settings and try to like it again. But I give up. Notifications just dont matter that much to me. My advice to anyone new to the app: definitely dont bother unless you are have a specific, clear need for notifications from some app.

I have had no problems with Growl. When I first got the Mac App Store version of Growl I was disappointed that it seemed not to work with Skype, as previous versions did. So I read on some forums and found out thats why the Growl people have Growl Version Detective on the download page of their website. Im not sure if this will solve every users problems but I ran it shortly after I got this version of Growl and it has never failed on me. It works well with Skype and everything else.

Growl now crash all the time when I wake up my laptop with an external monitor.. very annoying! Keep updating it!

doesnt work as well as it should, it didnt improve my productivity.

When I purchased growl 1.3.3 I was prompted to remove the legacy version which I did. Now I have no growl in my pref pane and I cant re-install. Seems like a waste of money, no?

Constantly spikes to >100% CPU usage, and doesnt go back to normal levels unless I force quite the process. Otherwise, a useful tool… if I didnt have to force quit it several times a day.

2012-07-09: Decided to enable Growl again today. Still causing high CPU usage. Thats a deal breaker for a laptop. I give up. Bye bye Growl.

Current release breaks Growl Mail compatability. Update just came out today so im sure a fix is coming, but be aware for now!

Its a known issue, and is apparently been fixed in the source code, but its been months since a new release. Means I have to manually kill and restart Growl. For something that used to be free, its disapointing that as a paid app more attention isnt given to rolling new releases.

I think the growl is really useful and in the last version i couldnt catch a bug yet. It is a cool app and i think we should support the developers since they contribute to the open source community a lot. it is less than a coffee price and the more people download it the better the app gets.

Some features do not work with Mountain Lion and some of the subfeatures do not work with this version of Growl… The requirements state it should work in all new versions of MAC OSX This is not explained in the write up. VERY poor!. I want my money back as this is totally unusable as it is now to me!

This app was awesome until Apple allowed App notifications right on your desktop… So it’s irrelevant now.

Looked cool but does nothing more than run in the background using up precious RAM. Claims to work “out of the box” but I’ve been running it for more than a week and nothing displays in rollup. Definately uninstalling this app and kissing $6.20 CDN goodbye!

I bought and installed the application. Firstly, no application shown, even the one in Extra. Then, i found on internet that if you install first the 1.2.2 and remove it and reinstall the latest application from the appstore, the issue is solved. True, now i can see the applications, but notifications dont work. This is just too complicated…it should work from scratch, and as explained in the description

This application should be part of OS X. Ive been a happy user for 5 years, and I see nothing to change my mood in Lion. $2 is virtually free compared to the use Ive had out of it. I like the menubar icon - its easy to pause Growl when making screencasts, etc. Great work!

It just doesnt work on my MacBook Pro 15-inch, Mid 2010 Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50) Used the free Growl 1.2.2 before, which work perfectly - and I could uninstall it with the Uninstaller included in the Disk Image. The App Store installs and I dont know how to uninstall so that I can use the free version (Growl 1.2.2) again. I also would like to get a refund. After all it DOES NOT WORK. Felix

1.4になってから動作しないアプリケーションがいくつか出てきました。 Growl Version Detectiveを使って確認してみると、最新のフレームワークの1.3.1を利用しているにも関わらず通知ができなくなっています。 CPU使用率が100%になることがあり、killするとGrowl対応アプリケーションを巻き込んで落とします。 有料になってから粗悪になった感が否めません。