Snarl 5.0

The current Windows notification system is....functional. However, like many other features Windows has, it's lacking in some areas. There have been some buzz from the userbase for Microsoft to improve on these features, but despite many promises, Microsoft has been incredibly slow over the years in implementing these upgrades. After a while, some users create their own upgrades to fill the void, and one of them is Snarl.

Snarl is a global alert system for your computer that's completely customizable. You can set it to do any number of things - for example, you can set it to give hourly alerts, find out exactly when and where your Clipboard content is replaced, or get notifications on low disk space with readouts on exactly how much space you have left. And these are just some of the functions - by default, it has ten components that you can enable and disable, and some of them have settings to customize. If you want even more, you'll need to download them online. 

Here are a few examples of components. AudioMon is in charge of the system's volume control, while Clock+ shows the current time every hour. You can also hold a key - tab by default - and it will reveal the time on screen without any more prompting. CPUDaemon looks at the CPU usage and lets you know if it's getting near max usage, and then launches a wizard to help you tweak that. All in all, Snarl is a completely free, flat upgrade to your computer's notification system.