Sparkle is a free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 software framework

Software framework

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...

 designed to simplify updating software for the end user of a program. Sparkle supports checking for updates via appcasting.

Programs

It is used in over 100 programs, such as:

• Adium
  Adium
  Adium is a free and open source instant messaging client for Mac OS X that supports multiple IM networks, including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ, and XMPP. It supports many protocols through the libraries libezv , MGTwitterEngine , and libpurple...
  
  
• AppZapper
  AppZapper
  AppZapper is an application for Apple's Mac OS X developed by Austin Sarner and Brian Ball.The software is an uninstall utility which extends the method of uninstalling in Mac OS X, which is dragging the application one wants to uninstall to the trash...
  
  
• Bookends
  Bookends (software)
  Bookends is a commercial reference management software package for Mac OS X that is used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. Its target market is students, academics and professionals. It works with several word processors, including Microsoft Word, Apple...
  
  
• Cog
  Cog (software)
  Cog is an open source audio player for Mac OS X. The basic layout is a single-paned playlist interface with two retractable drawers, one for navigating the user's music folders and another for viewing audio file properties, like bitrate...
  
  
• Colloquy
  Colloquy (IRC client)
  Colloquy is an open-source IRC, SILC, ICB and XMPP client for Mac OS X. Colloquy uses its own core, known as Chat Core, although in the past it used Irssi as its IRC protocol engine. One of the primary goals behind Colloquy was to create an IRC, SILC and ICB client with Mac OS X visuals...
  
  
• Cyberduck
  Cyberduck
  Cyberduck is an open source FTP and SFTP, WebDAV, Cloud Files, Google Docs, and Amazon S3 client for Mac OS X and Windows licensed under the GPL. Cyberduck is written in the Java language and using the Cocoa user interface framework. It supports FTP/TLS , using AUTH TLS as well as directory...
  
  
• Evernote
  EverNote
  Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. Notes can also have file attachments...
  
  
• ExpanDrive
  ExpanDrive
  ExpanDrive is a Network file system client for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows that facilitates mapping of local volume to any SFTP server the user can access. It also can connect to FTP servers and Amazon S3. When a server is mounted with ExpanDrive any program can read, write, and manage remote...
  
  
• Hulu Desktop
• iStumbler
  IStumbler
  iStumbler is an open source utility for finding wireless networks and devices with AirPort- or Bluetooth-enabled Macintosh computers.iStumbler was originally based on MacStumbler source code...
  
  
• Lion Designer
• Mactracker
  Mactracker
  Mactracker is a freeware application containing a complete database of all Apple Macintosh hardware, including the Lisa , all versions of Mac OS, cameras, iPods, AirPort, printers, scanners, startup chimes, death chimes, and Macintosh clones. Sources for the history and text used in Mactracker are...
  
  
• MainMenu
• Max
• OmniGraffle
  OmniGraffle
  OmniGraffle is a diagramming application made by The Omni Group. OmniGraffle is built only for Mac OS X and the iPad. It may be used to create diagrams, flow charts, org charts, and illustrations. It features a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface...
  
  
• OmniWeb 5.6
  OmniWeb
  OmniWeb is a proprietary Internet web browser developed and marketed by The Omni Group. It is available exclusively for Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system...
  
  
• Path Finder
  Path Finder
  Path Finder is a Macintosh file browser developed by Cocoatech. First released simultaneously with the public release of Mac OS X...
  
  
• PDF Shrink
• Peel
  Peel (software)
  Peel is an MP3 blog reader/player/browser for Mac OS X. After you input an MP3 blog's URL, Peel generates a playlist of the available songs. From there, the user is able to listen to the songs, download the songs, and copy them into iTunes....
  
  
• Pixelmator
  Pixelmator
  Pixelmator is a graphic editor developed for Mac OS X, by Pixelmator Team Ltd built upon a combination of open source and Mac OS X technologies...
  
  
• Pixen
  Pixen
  Pixen is an open-source raster graphics editor for Mac OS X created by the Open Sword Group. It is designed to create and edit pixel art. The latest version is Pixen 3.-Features:...
  
  
• PwnageTool
• Quinn
• Scrivener
  Scrivener (software)
  Scrivener is a word-processing program designed for writers. Scrivener provides a management system for documents, notes and metadata. This allows the user to keep track of notes, concepts, research and whole documents for reference...
  
  
• Simple Comic
  Simple Comic
  Simple Comic is an open source comic book and manga viewer for Mac OS X. It supports reading both directories of images and comic book archives...
  
  
• SubEthaEdit
  SubEthaEdit
  SubEthaEdit is a collaborative real-time editor designed for Mac OS X. The name comes from the Sub-Etha communication network in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series....
  
  
• TeXShop
  TeXShop
  TeXShop is a free TeX editor and previewer for Mac OS X. It is licensed under the GNU GPL.It was developed by the American mathematician Richard Koch. TeXShop was created especially for the Mac OS X user interface Aqua and capitalized on the native PDF support of the Macintosh operating system...
  
  
• Transmission
  Transmission (BitTorrent)
  Transmission is a BitTorrent client which features a simple interface on top of a cross-platform back-end. Transmission is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License , with parts under the MIT License.-Features:...
  
  
• VLC Media Player
  VLC media player
  VLC media player is a free and open source media player and multimedia framework written by the VideoLAN project.VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It is able to...
  
  
• WebKit
  WebKit
  WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. WebKit powers Google Chrome and Apple Safari and by October 2011 held over 33% of the browser market share between them. It is also used as the basis for the experimental browser included with the Amazon Kindle ebook...
  
  
• Xslimmer
  Xslimmer
  Xslimmer is an application for Apple's Mac OS X developed by LateNiteSoft.The software is a utility to tweak universal binaries by stripping the binary from either its PowerPC or Intel code . This recovers hard disk space. Purportedly, the recovered space is significant...
  
  

Other OS alternatives

There are several open source Windows alternatives to offer similar functionality to Sparkle:

• wyUpdate (BSD licensed) in tandem with the AutomaticUpdater (LGPL licensed)
• WinSparkle (MIT licensed)

There is also a REALbasic

REALbasic

Realbasic is the object-oriented dialect of the BASIC programming language used in Real Studio, a programming environment, developed and commercially marketed by Real Software, Inc of Austin, Texas for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, 32-bit x86 Linux and the web.- Language features :RB is a strongly...

implementation of Sparkle that works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux: RBSparkle.