jGrowl is a jQuery plugin for raising unobtrusive notification “toasts” in the browser, styled after the way OS X’s Growl framework worked. Growl itself has since been retired and its site is gone, but jGrowl is still alive and maintained — version 1.5.1 shipped in January 2025 and it remains a zero-dependency, single-plugin drop-in.
Grab it from the GitHub repository or install via npm install jgrowl (it is also on the npm registry). The old plugins.jquery.com/project/jgrowl listing no longer exists.
Usage
<link rel="stylesheet" href="jquery.jgrowl.min.css">
<script src="jquery.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.jgrowl.min.js"></script>
<script>
$.jGrowl('Deploy complete', { header: 'CI', life: 4000 });
$.jGrowl('Could not reach the API', { theme: 'error' });
</script>Each call raises a stacked notification in a corner container; life controls the auto-dismiss timeout, and theme lets you hook custom CSS per message type.
Going native instead
If you are not already carrying jQuery, note that the browser has caught up with most of what made jGrowl attractive: the Popover API and <dialog> give you layered, top-positioned message surfaces with no library at all, and a twenty-line CSS toast stack covers the rest. Reach for jGrowl when jQuery is already in the stack; otherwise go native.