While Apple’s Notification Center feature in OS X Mountain Lion is incredibly useful, it doesn’t quite work the same way as the tool that most people used before Mountain Lion arrived: Growl. It doesn’t offer as many options as Growl, and it doesn’t push out notifications for as many things.
So what’s a user to do to if they’re already used to Growl? Waiting for Growl 2.0 (which will include full Notification Center integration) is one option – but who knows how long that could take?! In the meantime, a new app called Hiss can make up the difference.
First pointed out by 9to5Mac, Hiss works as a middleman between Growl and Notification Center, snatching Growl notifications before they appear on your screen, and automatically feeding them right into Notification Center. The app seems to work quite well too, giving Growl a more native feel on Apple’s latest operating system.
There are a few minor setbacks to using Hiss, however. For instance, it lumps all Growl notifications into a single section rather that creating a section for each app – so it’s hard to tell which app a certain notification might have come from.
Also, clicking on the notifications does not send you directly to the app it came from – since they actually all came from Hiss. Even considering its faults, Hiss still provides a preliminary way to make Growl and Notification Center play nicely together.
Hiss is available now as a free download.
