# Alternatives to Growl

macOS notifications before Notification Center. Growl has been discontinued; the active alternatives listed here are maintained products you can switch to.

None of its 9 checklist rows are verified yet.

Source: https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/growl/
Category: System monitors

## Overview

- **Who it's for**: Mac (and later Windows) users who wanted a single, customizable way to see alerts from multiple applications, and the developers who integrated notifications into their apps before the OS provided one.
- **What you get**: Growl provided a unified pop-up notification system that any Growl-enabled application could send alerts to, with a public API/SDK for developers to hook into. Users could choose from different visual display styles and configure which notifications appeared, sounded, or logged, and manage settings per application. It ran as a menu bar utility with a paid Mac App Store version and a free/open-source build, plus a Growl for Windows port.
- **How it works**: Applications sent notification requests to the Growl daemon running in the background, which displayed them using the user's chosen visual style and per-app preferences. Development ended around 2020 as Apple's built-in Notification Center made a third-party system unnecessary.

## Profile


## Ranked alternatives

| # | App | Alt Score | Licence | Platforms |
|---|-----|-----------|---------|-----------|
| 1 | [btop](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/btop.md) | building | Apache-2.0 | Linux, macOS |
| 2 | [CrystalDiskInfo](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/crystaldiskinfo.md) | building | MIT | Windows |
| 3 | [Glances](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/glances.md) | building | LGPL-3.0 | Linux, macOS, Windows |
| 4 | [htop](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/htop.md) | building | GPL-2.0 | Linux, macOS |
| 5 | [HWiNFO](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/hwinfo.md) | building | Proprietary | Windows |
| 6 | [iStat Menus](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/istat-menus.md) | building | Proprietary | macOS |
| 7 | [MenuBar Stats](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/menubar-stats.md) | building | Proprietary | macOS |
| 8 | [Stats](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/stats.md) | building | MIT | macOS |

Alt Score = Verified coverage (90%) + Visibility (10%). See https://altcatalog.com/how-alt-score-works/

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Ranked by verified data, never by who paid. https://altcatalog.com/trust/