How to use iChat with Growl on Mac OS X Lion?

This article will help you configure iChat, the default IM client that comes with Mac OS X with Growl notification system. There isn’t any direct workaround though, but this script will do the work for you!

Mac OS X Lion comes with a completely integrated iChat client with it and there isn’t much distance until we see iMessage getting integrated into iChat. And Growl being one of the most robust Notification systems for Mac OS X, for a really long time, we might be wanting to get notifications for iChat via Growl. But unfortunately there isn’t a native way to do so.

The only known way to get notifications for iChat is to use an apple script, that would push the message to Growl and kicks off the notification for the particular message from iChat. So, here’s how you could do so:

Download this iChat-Growl script and save it in a place you are comfortable with.
Fire up iChat’s Preferences pane and go to Alerts tab
Choose the type of notification for which you want Growl to push the message
Now, Enable Run an Apple Script option.
In the Drop-down, select the option, Choose script option
Select the iChat_growl.scpt from the location you saved it.
You are done! When a notification is triggered, you will get a pop-up screen asking you to choose the Growl.app’s location. Just choose it and you are good to go!