Is the site up, is the certificate still valid, did the page change?

Name: DeskUptime
Author: Mads Holst Jensen

DeskUptime answers those three questions from your own computer. A free command-line tool for one-off checks and CI, and a small desktop app that keeps checking in the background. No hosted dashboard, no monthly fee, nothing about your sites stored on someone else's server.

Install the CLI Download the desktop app Source on GitHub

CLI is free and MIT-licensed. Desktop app is free for up to 3 sites; Pro licence 19 USD one-time.

How it works

One command, no install, no account:

$ npx github:mahope/deskuptime check https://example.com https://cloudflare.com
Checking 2 URL(s)...

ok  https://example.com
    Status:    200 OK
    Response:  85 ms
    SSL:       expires in 63 days
    Content:   559 bytes, sha256 unchanged

ok  https://cloudflare.com
    Status:    200 OK
    Response:  312 ms
    SSL:       expires in 42 days
    Content:   1,316,377 bytes

Add watch to keep checking on an interval, and it prints a line each time something changes:

deskuptime watch https://example.com --interval 300

Uptime and response time: HTTP status, redirect chain and how long the response took. A non-2xx status or a timeout is reported as down.
SSL certificate: Days until expiry, issuer, protocol version. The default warning threshold is 14 days.
Content changes: A SHA-256 hash of the response body is compared with the previous run. Useful for spotting a broken deploy, an injected script or a defaced page.
Exit codes and JSON for CI: Exit 0 when everything passes, 2 when a site is down. --json gives machine-readable output, watch --once runs a single pass for cron. Use it as a post-deploy smoke test or on a schedule in GitHub Actions.

Who it is for

Freelancers and small agencies who look after a handful of client sites and do not want another subscription for it. Developers who want a smoke test after every deploy. Anyone who has found out from a customer that a certificate expired.

It is not a replacement for a distributed monitoring service with a status page and on-call rotation. Checks run from the machine you run them on; if that machine is asleep, nothing is checked. That is the trade-off for keeping it local and free of running costs.

Install the CLI

brew tap mahope/tap && brew install deskuptime   # macOS / Linux
npx github:mahope/deskuptime check https://your-site.com   # no install, needs Node 18+

Tagged tarballs are on GitHub Releases. In GitHub Actions, use the mahope/deskuptime action with a list of URLs; the job fails when a site is down and a status table lands in the job summary. There is a walkthrough for the CI setup.

Desktop app

A small Tauri app for macOS and Windows that lives in the system tray and runs the same checks on a schedule. Notifications when a site goes down, a certificate approaches expiry or the content hash changes. Current version 0.2.7.

macOS, Apple Siliconzip, aarch64
macOS, Intelzip, x86_64
Windows 10 and laterNSIS installer

If macOS or Windows warns about an unidentified developer on first launch, that is because the build is not code-signed through their paid programmes. Right-click and choose Open on macOS; choose "More info" then "Run anyway" on Windows.

Free and Pro

	CLI	Desktop	Desktop Pro
Uptime, SSL and content checks	yes	yes	yes
One-off `check` of any number of URLs	yes	yes	yes
Continuous watch / background checks	yes	yes	yes
System tray and notifications	—	yes	yes
Sites in watch mode	3	3	unlimited
Email and webhook alerts	—	—	yes
Price	free	free	19 USD once

CLI and desktop app

Free

MIT-licensed. One-off checks have no limits; continuous watch mode covers up to three sites.

Desktop Pro

19 USD one-time, 3 machines, all 1.x updates

Removes the three-site limit and adds email and webhook alerts. A licence key, no subscription, no phone-home.

Pro is coming — checkout is not open yet. The free version is complete and MIT-licensed, and nothing in it expires.

Questions

What happens when my computer is off or asleep?

Nothing is checked until it wakes up. DeskUptime runs where you run it. If you need checks that continue while your laptop is closed, run the CLI on a server or in a scheduled GitHub Actions workflow — both are free.

Does it send my URLs anywhere?

Only to the sites being checked. There is no account, no central server and no telemetry. This site runs an anonymous page-view counter and nothing else.

How is this different from UptimeRobot or Pingdom?

Those check from many locations around the clock and charge monthly for it. DeskUptime checks from one place — yours — and costs nothing to run. For a personal site or a few client sites that is usually enough. For a service with an SLA, it is not.

Can I check many sites at once?

Yes. Pass any number of URLs to check. Watch mode is limited to three sites without a Pro key. The free web checkers do a bulk URL check and a security-headers check without installing anything.

Is there a Linux desktop build?

Not yet. The CLI runs on Linux; the desktop app is currently built for macOS and Windows only. It is a Tauri app, so a Linux build is possible if there is demand — open an issue on GitHub.

Who makes this

DeskUptime is built by Mads Holst Jensen, an independent developer in Odense, Denmark, working as mahoje.dk. It came out of looking after client WordPress sites and wanting a check that did not need another account. The engine, the CLI and the desktop app are all on GitHub.