What is the Growl thing that gets installed with Bitcoin on Mac?

[Raoul Duke]

Yeah, the question on the Topic.

I had a friend install Bitcoin-qt on his Macbook and he came to me all freaked out asking what was the Growl thing who was displaying messages to him and that it started to happen after him installing the Bitcoin client and that it was the same type of popup notification as the bitcoin one.

I understand it's a notification software for mac, but do you think it's a good idea to install it without the user consent, especially when it popus random messages(? can't tell exactly the message cause I haven't seen it) telling users to visit their site or something along those lines? At least the Growl.info URL was on those notifications.

[splatster]

To my knowledge Growl documention says that applications should NOT install Growl without express user consent. I had Growl installed on my Mac before I had bitcoin-qt, so I do not know if your friend's case is somehow a fluke. If your friend would prefer not having Growl on their system, there should be an uninstall option in the preference pane if I remember correctly.

[Gavin Andresen]

Bitcoin doesn't install Growl-- something else must have in the past.

PS: there is an open bug in the 0.6 release that it is not compatible with some versions of Growl; if that isn't resolved Growl notifications might be completely disabled.

[Raoul Duke]

Bitcoin doesn't install Growl-- something else must have in the past.

PS: there is an open bug in the 0.6 release that it is not compatible with some versions of Growl; if that isn't resolved Growl notifications might be completely disabled.

Hi Gavin. Thanks for the confirmation.
Ok, something else must have installed Growl before. It's still strange that Growl own notifications only started poping up after he started using Bitcoin. Coincidence, or maybe a new Growl release and it's telling him to update it? Like I said I didn't see the exact message, but it has their website URL in it. Nothing to worry about.

[wumpus]

Isn't there a notification system on mac that doesn't require an external program? I've always found that strange. On other OSes we simply use the built-in features.

[splatster]

Isn't there a notification system on mac that doesn't require an external program? I've always found that strange. On other OSes we simply use the built-in features.

In the current public releases of OS X, no.  Starting in OS X Mountain Lion, there is an iOS-like notification center.