There are two components to Prowl: the application running on your iPhone, and the Growl plugin. Installing the Growl plugin on your Mac only takes a few steps.

If you're looking for information for setting up Growl for Windows, head to the FAQ.

• Installing the Growl plugin
• Setting up the Growl plugin
• Growl plugin preferences
• Prowl iPhone application preferences

Prerequisites

You need a few things before you get started:

• Register for a Prowl account on the register page.
• Log into Prowl on your iPhone or iPod touch.
• Make sure you have Growl installed and that it's the latest version.

Installing the Growl plugin

1. Download the Growl plugin¹. If you need to, run it after it downloads. You'll find a volume mounted that looks like this:
   

2. Double-click Prowl.growlView; Growl will install it for you. You should see a dialog like this:
   
   Click "Yes" and Growl will open its preferences.

Setting up the Growl plugin

Prowl's settings can be found under the 'Display Options' preference inside Growl. The first time you install the plugin, Growl should take you directly to it.

1. Prowl's preferences inside Growl should look something like this:
   

2. Enter your Prowl username and password into the Prowl preferences. Click the Verify button when you're done, and your password will be checked for you. You should see confirmation that looks like this:
   

3. With your information set in the plugin, any events which are set to use the Prowl display style will be sent to the Prowl server. You can set an individual style from the main "Applications" menu inside Growl:
   
   You can also set Prowl to be your global style from the "Display Options" preference:
   

Growl plugin preferences

Prowl's Growl plugin features a few extra features that help reduce the amount of unnecessary notifications you receive, as well as allow Growl to continue to be useful.

• Prefix notifications sent to Prowl with… will prefix all notifications sent to Prowl with the option which you decide. For example, this can be used to differentiate machines by giving it text such as "Machine A".

• Display notifications using style… allows you to display any event which uses the 'Prowl' style in any other style. For example, if you still want your notifications to be displayed using Smoke, choose Smoke from the list.

  Choosing Prowl from this list does not have any effect. If you aren't seeing your notifications on your Mac, you should make sure you haven't selected Prowl here.

• Only send to Prowl when priority is at least… will only send notifications which have at minimum the priority you've chosen. For example, if you select "High" as your preference, only "High" and "Emergency" notifications will be sent to Prowl.

  You can configure the priority preferences on an individual notification's settings page, but a lot of applications let you determine what priority a notification will be sent as in their preferences. This feature is being introduced into Adium, for example, in their version 1.4 release.

• Only send to Prowl when computer is idle for more than… will only send notifications when you haven't used your computer for some period of time. If you set this to 5 minutes, no Growl messages will be sent to Prowl until you've left your computer idle for 5 minutes.

  Some media applications, such as VLC and Quicktime, will prevent this from occurring. If you find this preference not working, double-check it isn't during playback of a video in a multimedia program.

• Only send to Prowl when the screensaver is active will only send notifications when your screen saver has either started due to idle time, or you activate it through a hot corner.

  This is particularly useful to make sure that if you walk out of the house, notifications sent seconds after you get up are still delivered, unlike with the idle preference, since you can force the screensaver to start.

Prowl iPhone application preferences

If you want to control Sounds, Alerts or Badging from Push notifications, use the Notifications option at the top of the main Settings list.

In-application Settings

Prowl's in-application settings allow you to configure the delivery options for the notifications you receive:

• Sounds While Open, when on, will play the sound setting while Prowl is open. If you want to hear a sound when a Push notification comes in while Prowl is open enable this.

• Quiet Hours will prevent notifications from playing sound or displaying the alert dialog box during the hours you set:

  • Allow Emergencies will allow notifications with emergency priority to ignore your quiet hours settings and still come through loud and strong.

  • Quiet Times are the hours which quiet hours applies to. For example, if you set your quiet hours to be 02:00 AM through 06:00 AM, during these times only badge counts will be updated.

• Emergency, High, Normal, Moderate and Low Sound are the sounds which play during the notification whose priority falls under any of these categories. You can either specify one of Prowl's included sounds, or choose "None" or (iPhone-only for obvious reasons) "Vibrate Only".

• 

  Redirections allow you to launch another application after receiving a push notification based on rules you define.

  • Update Launchable List will update Prowl's internal list of applications which it is able to relaunch. This list is updated as new applications are discovered. Note that only certain applications (those that specify a custom URL scheme) are able to be launched.

  • Add a New Redirection will allow you to add a redirection. Enter any part of the name of the application sent from your computer and choose the application to launch on your device.

  • The order in which notifications are displayed is the order in which they are matched against the application name. If you're using things which may conflict, place the one on top which you feel should be more prevalent.

External Application Settings

To configure the Prowl username, if necessary, you can edit Prowl's settings inside the main Settings application.

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Geeky Stuff

• This is version 1.0.4 of the Growl plugin, which has an SHA-1 hash of af81c9eef8807e72aaf5ea1c5e3926c0564fb725.

• Version 1.0.4 changes:
  • Added a "prefix" option which is used when sending notifications to Prowl.
  • Added "only send to Prowl when the screensaver is active" preference.
  • Fixed the default "redirect" style saying "Smoke" but actually not doing anything.
• Version 1.0.3 changes:
  • Now stores the password so updates can still work after the keychain is locked.
  • Silently sends priority for use in future versions of the Prowl application.
  • Added Sparkle for update checking on the Prowl view.
  • Compiled as a 32-bit/64-bit binary for support with future operating systems.
• Version 1.0.2 changes:
  • Made Keychain errors much more visible and verbose.
• Version 1.0.1 changes:
  • Added some more logging for password save errors.
  • Fixed setting a Priority inside Growl and Prowl ignoring it.