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The Watchdog app icon: a puppy with a heartbeat tag

Know the moment your site goes down.

Watchdog lives in your Mac's menu bar and checks your websites and APIs around the clock: HTTP, SSL, DNS, domains, ports and webhooks. From your own Mac.

Download for MacSee it work

Free · No account · macOS 15 or later

How it works

Deep in a refactor.

3:11 PM · Focus on, headphones on. Watchdog sits quietly in the menu bar.

Payments stops answering.

3:12 PM · The icon turns red on the next check. A blip is re-checked within seconds first.

It gets through your Focus.

3:12 PM · A Time Sensitive notification, with the reason right in it.

Critical? The siren sounds.

3:13 PM · An alarm panel on every Space, even over full-screen apps.

Fixed. Back in the zone.

3:16 PM · Recovered, and how long it was down. Then it goes quiet again.

Features

Everything it does, in one small app.

18 features, free, no plan to upgrade to. Here they are, running.

Checks

Checks everything a site needs.

Six kinds of check, each with its own interval, timeout and retries.

  • HTTP & health
  • SSL certificates
  • DNS
  • Domain expiry
  • TCP & ping
  • Webhooks & jobs

Alerts

Tells you, the right way.

One notification per problem. A siren for the critical ones.

  • Mac notifications
  • Siren alarm
  • Fast recovery

Insight

Remembers every minute.

Uptime to 90 days, p95, and why it broke.

  • Uptime history
  • Response times
  • Reasons in plain words

Organize

Finds anything, fast.

Groups per client, tags for search, priority for alerts.

  • Groups, tags, priority
  • Timing per check
  • Search & filters

Private

Stays on your Mac.

Secrets in the Keychain. Offline is never downtime.

  • Runs on your Mac
  • Ownership verified
  • Offline-aware

History

Every outage, explained.

Uptime from 24 hours to 90 days, response times with p95, where every millisecond went, and the reason in plain words.

Shop API

Up

https://api.shop.com/healthNormal#api

24 h

100 %

7 d

99.98 %

30 d

99.95 %

90 d

99.91 %

Avg

142 ms

p95

310 ms

Incidents 30 d

2

Response time

1 h24 h7 d30 d

Last check · 142 ms

  • DNS 12 ms
  • Connect 18 ms
  • TLS 24 ms
  • Wait 70 ms
  • Download 18 ms

90 days, a dot for every day

  • Up
  • Slow
  • Down
  • No data

The reason, in plain words

  • Server answered 502 Bad Gateway.
  • Answered in 2.4 s (limit 1 s).
  • SSL certificate expired yesterday.

Offline-aware

Your Wi-Fi drops.
Your uptime doesn't.

Hotel Wi-Fi, a captive portal, a Mac waking from sleep: Watchdog knows it's your connection, not your server. It pauses, says so, and records “no data”. Never downtime, never a 3 a.m. false alarm.

  • Checks pause while you're offline
  • Resumes on its own when you're back
  • Sleep and captive portals handled the same way

Private by design

Only your servers. Verified.

Watchdog checks a server only after you prove it is yours: one DNS record or one file, once. No account, no backend. Everything stays on your Mac.

  • No accountNothing to sign up for. Nobody else sees your list.
  • No cloudEvery check runs from your own Mac. No backend of ours.
  • Secrets in the KeychainNever in a file, a log or a notification.
Verify Ownership

Verify that you own Shop

Watchdog checks a server only after you prove it is yours. You do this once; your other devices use the same verification.

Type
TXT
Name
_watchdog-verify.shop.com
Value
watchdog-verify=wdv1-q3m7k2p9x4t6v8b1n5c0z2r7y4w9e3a6

Add this TXT record at your DNS provider. It can be removed after verification. Other people's Watchdog values can stay next to it.

Screens

The real app. Every window.

Sample data, real screens.

  • Watchdog's popover under the menu bar, listing servers with status and 24-hour dots

    Menu bar

  • The alarm panel: two servers down, with Acknowledge, Snooze and Stop Sound

    Alarm

  • A server's detail: uptime from 24 hours to 90 days and a response time chart

    Server detail

  • The Add Server window with address, group, tags and checks

    Add a server

  • The popover in the “You are offline” state

    Offline

  • The ownership verification window with the DNS TXT record

    Verify a domain

Get it

Drag. Drop.
Watched.

Free, no account. Drag it to Applications, add your first server, prove it's yours, and let it keep watch while you sleep.

Download for Mac

macOS 15 or later · Apple silicon and Intel