However, this new delivery method also means that applications that previously installed Growl as a part of their own installation process (such as Dropbox, some HP drivers, and Adobe Creative Suite 5) will no longer be able to do so with the latest version. On the upside, this solves the other portion of the aforementioned update-reminder annoyance.

Once developers have integrated the latest version of Growl's Software Development Kit (SDK), they will have access to a new version of the framework that can display what is affectionately called a "Fire and Forget" or "Mini Growl." That's a simple notification alert, but one that doesn't allow for much customization on its own; in order to change the look and feel of these alerts, the end user would have to get the Mac App Store application and make changes there.

The latest version of the framework will deliver its data to the 1.3 version of the application through another of its new features: a new networking standard. This networking protocol, GNTP, isn't new to users, as it was first developed by that team and later adopted by Growl for Mac. One perk of this new feature is that cross-platform users will gain the ability to share their notifications across their computers, regardless of operating system.

One change necessitated by the shift to the Mac App Store is that the utilities that previously came packaged with the Growl distribution will have to be spun off as their own applications or discontinued. The ever popular add-on has been picked up by Growl contributor Rudy Richter for continued independent development.