When comparing Growl vs Karabiner, the Slant community recommends Growl for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Growl is ranked 15th while Karabiner is ranked 29th. The most important reason people chose Growl is:
In addition to all the applications that other people have written that support Growl, Growl includes several 'Extras' that serve various functions.
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Pros
Pro Support for a lot more applications than the default notification system
In addition to all the applications that other people have written that support Growl, Growl includes several 'Extras' that serve various functions.
Pro Ability to be themed
Growl comes with almost 20 themes pre-installed so you can pick what works best for you. You can also create and install your own custom themes.
Pro Sync with mobile phone via Prowl
Prowl is the Growl client for iOS. Push to your iOS device notifications from your Mac or Windows computer, or from a multitude of apps and services.
Pro Low-level key bindings/mappings
For example: Fn+C now calls up contextual menus for me with:
<!-- Fn + C = same as right-click mouse -->
<item>
<name>kybd control click</name>
<identifier>private.keybd_to_control_click</identifier>
<autogen>
__KeyToKey__
KeyCode::C, ModifierFlag::FN,
KeyCode::VK_MOUSEKEY_BUTTON_RIGHT
</autogen>
</item>
Pro Make FN key into a new modifier key for custom shortcuts across apps
Cons
Con Difficult to configure custom actions
Configuring custom actions requires editing an XML file with very strange syntax, for which it's difficult to find good documentation.