Prowl: Growl Notifications On Your iPhone

Many Mac users use Growl to get notifications for numerous pieces of software, such as: Skype, Firefox, Cyberduck (file transfer client), some Twitter clients, and more. This is great, but what about if you leave your computer? How can you find out if you missed some Skype calls, or whether you missed any instant messages on Adium? This is where Prowl for the iPod Touch and iPhone comes in.

For those who don’t know, Growl is a notification system for your computer (Mac or PC), with multiple application support, which basically tells you new information about what’s going on with the supported applications you are running, without having to switch out of the application you are currently in.

Now, if you would like to see these notifications on the go, you can download Prowl from the App Store, which is a Growl client for your iPhone or iPod Touch that enables you to see Growl notifications, from your computer, on a device running iPhone OS 3.0. Setting up the Growl-Prowl notification system is pretty easy (official Mac installation tutorial here, sorry PC users). It involves registering a username and password for an account on the Prowl website, then using your account to connect your computer, via a Prowl plugin for Growl, to the Prowl website, where it will sync your notifications to a web server. From the web server, your iPod Touch or iPhone running the Prowl app and iPhone OS 3.0 can sync and grab your computer’s notifications.  In that way, your device can receive Growl notifications from your computer, but getting it to work with your current Growl setup can be a little annoying, involving some fiddling with Growl System Preference panes.

The functionality is the first reason for why I like this app. Prowl serves as a great companion to Growl, especially if you use your computer enough to actually need to see your Growl notifications on the go. All Growl supported applications (which by the way is a lot!) naturally send notifications to Growl, which sends them to Prowl, where your iPod Touch or iPhone can receive the Growl notifications. This means that Prowl can pretty much help you monitor some, if not most, of the activities happening on your computer. While most people would just work with the Prowl push notifications, the Prowl app itself shows all of the notifications that were sent from Prowl, from your computer.

One of the reasons I like this application is because of it’s natural inclination to be the perfect iPhone companion. Because the iPhone is basically on the Internet every-time it’s on, notifications can be sent to the iPhone anywhere its located, as long as the computer you are intending to monitor is still on and connected to the Internet.  Prowl also takes advantage of the new iPhone OS 3.0 feature: Push Notification, which allows individual Growl notifications to be seen when Prowl is not running, but installed, on the iPod Touch or the iPhone. Also, because there aren’t many social networking clients on the App Store that don’t have push notification enabled, you can simply use this application as workaround in order to get push notifications for social networking and instant messaging sites and accounts (via your computer and the Prowl web server) on your device.

Overall, Prowl is a good application that runs great, and does what it’s made to do, but for a simple application, a price of $2.99 on the App Store can be debated to be rightly priced, or overpriced, depending on what you will use it for. I cannot really tell you if it’s worth it, though I did come up with a way to help you decide if it’s a must have. To see if you should get it, ask yourself these questions:

1. “How much do you use your iPhone or iPod Touch?”. - If you don’t use it that much, you probably won’t need it.
2. “If you are an iPod Touch owner, how many WiFi hotspots do you have access to?” – It’s very simple: iPod Touch + no WiFi access = no Internet
3. And finally, “Do you really need it.” – Pretty self-explanatory. In other words,”Do you really need to recieve notifications for missed Skype calls, or for instant messages on your computer, etc.?”

I personally would recommend Prowl to computer geeks, who definitely need new and instant Growl notifications on the go (from applications like:Firefox, some file transfer clients, some RSS readers, etc.), to those who communicate a lot on the computer (using applications like: Skype, Adium, some Twitter clients), and for users of the iPhone and iPod Touch that may rely on push notification on their portable device to help them manage all their communication when they are away from the computer. Basically, anyone who manages to get literally tons of Growl notifications on their computer should get this. Casual users can get this application, but you may not need it. If you don’t use your computer often, especially if you don’t social network, or just don’t get that many Growl notifications on your Mac, I really recommend you not buy this app.

Prowl, again, is available from the App Store for $2.99 USD. [iTunes Store Link]