Page Monitors

It watches one passage of text on one tab and tells you when that text changes. Monitors stay in your browser: nothing is published to Bigfoot, and no identity is involved.

Select the text you want to watch. Then choose Activity in the sidebar, open Page Monitors, and choose Monitor Selected Text…. Check the captured text and choose Create Page Monitor. The label starts as the page’s title; open Options to change it or to check Every 15 minutes, Every hour (the default), or Every day.

A webpage in a Regular tab that has finished loading. Each tab can have one monitor, and Private tabs can’t have any. Some pages, such as the result of sending a form, can’t be reloaded safely; Bigfoot then says This page cannot be safely refreshed for monitoring.

While the tab is in the background, a check may reload the page with your normal cookies and network access. A check never reloads a page you’re looking at; it reads the page as it is. Checks run only while Bigfoot is running.

The monitor pauses, and an entry appears in Activity. If you allow notifications from Bigfoot, you also get one system notification with the monitor’s label and the site’s name; it never includes the page’s text or address. You aren’t alerted again for the same change.

Resume From Current Text watches the new text from now on. Retarget… watches new text you select on the same tab. Open Tab takes you to the page, and Delete Monitor… removes the monitor without closing the tab.

Bigfoot couldn’t be sure it was still looking at the text you chose: the text wasn’t found, it matched more than one place, or it was found where Bigfoot couldn’t confirm it. Open the tab, select the text again, and choose Retarget…, or delete the monitor.

Yes. Pause stops checks until you choose Resume. Check Now checks an active monitor straight away, and Check All Now checks every active monitor. You can also change a monitor’s label and how often it checks.

Bigfoot asks first, because closing the tab permanently deletes its monitor. A monitor belongs to its tab: it moves with the tab between Regular windows and groups, but it isn’t copied when you duplicate the tab and can’t move into Private browsing.

Monitors pause and stay with their tabs. With Ask which page monitors to resume when Bigfoot opens turned on in Settings, Bigfoot lists them when it opens so you can choose which to resume. Otherwise they stay paused until you resume them in Page Monitors.

On a Mac, yes. Turn on Keep Bigfoot running after the last window closes in Settings; it needs Show Bigfoot in desktop status area turned on. Bigfoot then keeps running without windows, monitors keep checking, and you can reopen Bigfoot from the status area. Quit always stops Bigfoot.