Uptime Monitor App for iPhone and Mac

Uptime Watch checks your website every hour from Cloudflare's network and sends a push to your iPhone, and to your Mac, when it goes down and when it comes back. One URL is free for as long as you like. Guardian watches ten.

Download Free on the App Store

Or get PingKit Agent on the Mac App Store

Free to download. One URL is free with push. Guardian is $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year, with a 1-week free trial on both. Cancel anytime.

What Uptime Watch does

Add a URL. Once an hour, PingKit's backend on Cloudflare's network sends it an HTTP HEAD request with a 10-second timeout and records the status code and the response time. If the answer is anything other than a 2xx status, or there is no answer, the target is marked down and a push notification goes to your iPhone and to the Mac Agent. When the next check succeeds, you get a second notification saying it recovered. Results are kept for 30 days.

Nothing runs on your phone. The check happens whether your iPhone is in a drawer, your Mac is asleep, or both are off, which is what separates an uptime monitor from the Connection Monitor tool that watches this device's own connection while the app is open.

PingKit Uptime Watch on iPhone, listing monitored URLs with the current state of each and when it was last checked.

Hourly checks from the internet

The probe comes from Cloudflare, not from your network, so it sees your site the way a visitor does: DNS, TLS and all.

Down, then recovered

Two notifications per incident, not a stream. You hear when it fails and when it is back.

30 days of history

Status and response time per check, so a flaky host shows as flaky rather than as one bad morning.

No server, no dashboard tab

No account to create and nothing to host. The URL and its results live on PingKit's backend; everything else in the app stays on your device.

Three kinds of monitoring, and which one this is

PingKit has three ways to watch something, and people mix them up. Connection Monitor watches this iPhone's own connection, live, while the app is open. The Mac Agent watches your home or office network around the clock from a Mac that stays on: which devices are there, whether the internet is up, how fast it is. Uptime Watch watches a public URL from the internet, every hour, with no device of yours involved.

Uptime Watch in PingKit Agent for Mac, listing four monitored URLs with the current state of each and when it was last checked. One is down.
Uptime Watch in the Mac Agent: four monitored URLs, one of them down. The check that found it ran on Cloudflare, not on this Mac.

The same kind of target can be added from the Mac Agent's Uptime Watch pane, where a down site shows in the menu bar app as well as on the phone. Each device registers its own list with the backend.

What it will not do

It checks from the internet, so the target has to be reachable from the internet. A NAS, a Pi or a printer that only has a private address cannot be an Uptime Watch target. The Mac Agent's device-offline alert is the tool for those, and this guide walks through both.

It is a HEAD request and a status code. There is no keyword or content match, no login step, and it does not run the page's JavaScript. A site that answers automated requests with 403 will show as down.

The interval is one hour and cannot be changed. If you need one-minute checks from several regions, a public status page or an on-call rota, that is what UptimeRobot and its peers are for, and PingKit is not trying to replace them.

Free, or Guardian

One URL is free, permanently, with the same hourly checks and the same push notifications. PingKit Guardian raises the limit to ten. Guardian is $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year, on iPhone and iPad and, separately, in the Mac Agent, and both plans carry a 1-week free trial. A subscription bought on the iPhone unlocks the Mac Agent through iCloud; one bought in the Mac Agent covers that Mac only.

Guardian also puts the Mac Agent's monitoring on your phone, charts trends per network and adds a daily AI allowance. It is the tier most PingKit subscribers choose, and the one this feature was built for.

Setting it up

  1. On iPhone: open the Monitor tab, tap Uptime Watch, add the URL, and allow notifications when asked.
  2. On Mac: open PingKit Agent from the menu bar, choose Uptime Watch, and add the URL. Alerts arrive as macOS notifications.
  3. Use the full URL, including https://. The target must answer a HEAD request with a 2xx status; anything else is reported as down, which is a real finding about that site rather than a bug.

Questions and answers

Is there a free uptime monitor for iPhone?

Yes. PingKit's Uptime Watch monitors one URL free of charge, permanently, with hourly checks and push notifications when it goes down and when it recovers. There is no trial clock on the free URL. Guardian raises the limit to ten.

Does it keep checking when my phone is off?

Yes. The check runs on PingKit's backend on Cloudflare's network, not on your phone or your Mac, so it continues while both are off. The notification is delivered when your phone is next reachable.

Can I monitor my NAS, Plex server or router?

Only if it is reachable from the internet, for example through a domain you have pointed at it. A device that has only a private address on your home network is invisible to Uptime Watch; the Mac Agent's device-offline alert covers that case and reaches your iPhone with Guardian.

How often does it check, and can I change the interval?

Once an hour, and no. The interval is fixed. If you need checks every minute, from several regions, or a public status page, use a dedicated service alongside PingKit.

Where are my URLs and results stored?

On PingKit's own backend, a Cloudflare Worker, which needs them to run the checks and send the notifications. It holds the URLs you add and 30 days of results, nothing else. Device inventory, scans and diagnostics stay on your device and sync only through your private iCloud.

Watch one site, free.

Download PingKit, open the Monitor tab, and add the URL you keep checking by hand.

Download Free on the App Store

PingKit Agent on the Mac App Store

Requires iOS 17.0 or later. All 19 tools free, forever.