Usage Guide

Everything PageWatcher does, in the order you will meet it.

1. Install and sign in

Install PageWatcher from the Chrome Web Store, then click the puzzle-piece icon in Chrome's toolbar and pin PageWatcher so its icon is always visible — the icon is where the change badge appears. Until it is, the pin button at the top of the popup shows how.

Open the popup and press Continue with Google. Your watchers are stored in your account, so signing in on another computer brings them along.

You do not have to sign in first: Or pick something on this page first opens the picker straight away, and the account is asked for at the end, when there is a watcher to save.

2. Add your first watcher

1. Open the page you want to watch in a tab.
2. Click the PageWatcher icon, then Add Watcher. The page URL is filled in for you.
3. Give the watcher a name you will recognise in a notification, such as Headphone price.
4. Press Select Element. The popup closes and the page gets a highlight that follows your mouse — see the next section.
5. Back in the popup, choose how often to check and what to be alerted about, then Save. A first reading is taken straight away.

3. Picking the right element

Move the mouse over the page: whatever is under it gets a red outline and a small label naming it. Click to lock the selection. The card at the bottom shows the exact text that will be watched.

• Select more (or ↑) widens the selection to the element around it — use it when the outline only caught part of what you want.
• Select less (or ↓) narrows it to the first piece of text inside — use it when the outline caught a whole block and you only want one line of it.
• Pick another unlocks and lets you hover again. Esc cancels.
• Use this confirms and reopens the popup with the element filled in.

Pick the smallest element that contains what you care about. A price on its own changes only when the price changes; a whole product card also changes when a review count ticks up.

4. Deciding what you want to hear about

Every change is recorded in the watcher's log. These options decide which of them are worth a notification.

Check Interval

How often the page is re-read. Free accounts can check every 30 minutes or slower; Pro every 5 minutes or slower.

Stop after

Pause the watcher automatically after a set number of checks — handy for a one-off "did it ship yet". The default is to keep checking. Resuming a finished watcher starts its count over.

Alert me when

Anything changes is the default. The number goes up and The number goes down read the first number in the text and only alert in that direction — a price drop, a version bump. Prices like $1,299.00 or 1.234,56 € and versions like 2.10.1 or v2.10 are understood. If a reading has no number at all, you are alerted anyway rather than left in the dark. Below a value and Above a value ask for a figure, such as 1500, and alert on every change that leaves the number under it — or over it.

Word to watch for

A word or phrase the new content must contain for an alert to fire, such as in stock or available. Case does not matter, and the page has to say it, not deny it: available is not found in unavailable or in not available. Alert me only when it decides which way the condition reads: is on the page, or is gone from the page — which is how you watch for Sold out going away. You can pick the badge itself: once it has been read, the badge leaving the page counts as the word gone. Combine it with a direction if you like: both must hold.

Notify me by

Push (a desktop notification) and Email. Each toggle starts on Default, meaning it follows the switch in Settings. Touch a toggle and it becomes this watcher's own setting; Use default hands it back. Email alerts need a Pro account. A third switch, Webhook, appears once Settings holds an address (section 8). It starts on, except on a watcher whose Push and Email are both off: that one stays quiet there too until you turn its Webhook on.

5. The watcher list

• The dot is green when the last check found no change, red when it found one, and grey when the watcher is paused. A check that failed shows an amber warning sign instead.
• The countdown ticks down to the next scheduled check.
• Click a row to open the watcher.
• The pause / play button on the right stops and resumes that watcher without opening it.
• The header shows how many of your plan's watchers are in use; on a free account there is an Upgrade button beside it.

6. A watcher's page

• The three cards show when it was last checked, when the content last changed, and the countdown to the next check.
• Current content is what was read last. Click it to copy it.
• Watcher settings holds everything the form asked for — name, interval, check limit (with how many checks have been used), alert direction, keyword, and whether push and email are on (and whether they follow the Settings default). Every one of them is edited right here and saved the moment it changes; there is no separate edit screen. A new interval reschedules the next check from the last one; a new check limit starts the count over and wakes a watcher that had stopped at the old one.
• Ignore parts that always change takes one rule a line: * is any text and # any number, so # views or Updated * keeps a counter or a timestamp from counting as a change.
• Change selection opens the page with the picker so you can choose a different element. The watcher then starts fresh from the new element's content.
• The Change Log lists every recorded change, newest first, with the previous and current value side by side. The words that changed are marked, a number that moved says by how much — ↓ 100 (-6.3%) — and a number watched over time gets a line of where it has been, with its lowest and highest. Click either value to copy it; the download button beside the heading saves the whole log as a CSV file for a spreadsheet.
• The three buttons at the bottom are, left to right: Check now (reads the page immediately; this does not count towards a check limit), Pause / Resume, and Delete (removes the watcher with its history). Hover a button to see its name.

7. Notifications and the badge

When a change passes the watcher's conditions you get a desktop notification (if Push is on), an email (if Email is on and you are on Pro), and a count on the PageWatcher toolbar icon showing how many watchers have changed since you last looked. Opening the popup clears the count. Clicking a notification opens the page.

Changes found by the server while Chrome was closed (Pro) are picked up the next time Chrome runs, and show the badge and notification then.

8. Settings

• Language: English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Chinese. Arabic flips the whole layout to right-to-left.
• Theme: Dark, Light, or System to follow your operating system. The moon / sun button in the popup header cycles through the same three without opening Settings.
• Notification defaults: the Push and Email switches every watcher inherits unless it sets its own (section 4).
• Webhook: an https address every change is also posted to — Discord, Slack, n8n, Make and Zapier all take one. A Discord or Slack channel is read by people, so it gets what the desktop does: one post a minute per watcher, and three every five minutes, then one saying the rest are held. Any other address gets every change. Send a test posts a sample so you can watch it arrive. It goes out from this browser, so Chrome has to be running.
• Account: your plan, and Upgrade or Manage billing.
• Support: rate PageWatcher, support it on Buy Me a Coffee or Patreon, or write to us — the email opens with your plan and version already in it.

9. Free and Pro

Pro is $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year, billed by Lemon Squeezy. There are no refunds, except where the law requires one. Cancel any time from Settings → Manage billing: cancelling before the renewal date stops the next charge, and Pro stays active until the period you already paid for ends.

If your plan ever allows fewer watchers than you have — after a Pro subscription ends, say — the oldest ones keep running and the rest are paused as Over plan limit until you delete a watcher or upgrade.

10. Where each watcher is checked

A watcher is checked in one of two places, and Pro's checks while Chrome is closed apply to only one of them.

• On our servers (Pro). The server downloads the page's HTML and reads your element from it. It needs no browser, so it keeps going while Chrome is closed and your computer is off, and it sends the email. This works only for pages whose content is in the HTML the site sends, and that need no sign-in.
• In your browser. This is where every Free watcher is checked, and every page that needs JavaScript to draw itself or needs your sign-in. PageWatcher opens the page in a minimized window of its own, reads it, and closes it. This happens only while Chrome is running: with Chrome closed, nothing is checked, and no email is sent, until you open it again.

Pages that build themselves with JavaScript are common. YouTube playlists are one; so is part of a GitHub page, such as the latest release in the sidebar. On Pro these are still checked in your browser, not on the server.

How to tell where a watcher runs. Open it and read the line under Checked by: it says whether it runs on our servers, in this browser, or in this browser because the page builds itself with JavaScript.

How a Pro watcher gets there. With Checked by → Automatic a Pro watcher starts on the server. If the server cannot read your element from the page it gets, because the page draws it with JavaScript, needs your sign-in, or is larger than 2 MB, the watcher is handed back to your browser. Once a watcher has needed a real browser window it stays there until you pick the element again with Change selection, which gives the server another chance. Checked by → This browser keeps a watcher in your browser whatever the plan says.

If a page matters to you while Chrome is closed, pick an element that is part of the page's HTML rather than one it draws afterwards, and check the line under Checked by to see where it landed.

11. When something goes wrong

"Could not read that page"

The site did not answer, or answered with an error. The watcher backs off and tries again later. If it keeps failing, open the page yourself — it may be down or asking you to sign in.

"The selected element is no longer on the page"

The site changed its layout. Open the watcher, press Change selection, and pick the element again.

"The page was still loading when we checked"

The page builds itself with JavaScript and took too long. PageWatcher retries automatically.

"Chrome does not allow selecting elements on this page"

Chrome blocks extensions on its own pages (chrome://…), the Web Store, and some PDF viewers. Those cannot be watched.

A page that needs you to be logged in

Checks made from your browser send the site your cookies, so pages you are logged in to work. Server-side checks (Pro, on by default for every page that can be read without JavaScript) do not have your cookies; a page that looks different to them is handed back to your browser, and you can keep any watcher there with Checked by → This browser.

Questions or ideas: moath.developments@gmail.com. What is stored, and how to delete it, is in the Privacy Policy.