Browser checks for the journeys that matter

How browser checks work

A browser check is a list of steps. Uptime Dog starts a headless Chromium, opens the first URL and runs each step in order. If every step passes, the check is up. If a step fails, the check is down and the alert says which step failed and why, for example "Step 4 (expect text …) failed", followed by the reason.

The steps you can use

• Open a URL: always the first step.
• Click an element, by CSS selector.
• Type into a field, such as an email address or a search box.
• Press a key, such as Enter or Tab.
• Wait for an element to appear, or wait a fixed time of up to 10 seconds.
• Expect text to be on the page, or not to be.
• Expect the URL or the title to contain something.

A check can have up to 30 steps. Values you type in steps, such as a test account's password, are hidden everywhere except the editing form.

A screenshot when a step fails

When a step fails, Uptime Dog keeps a screenshot of the page at that moment. Instead of guessing why "Order confirmed" didn't appear, you can see the error banner, the cookie notice covering the button or the blank page that loaded instead.

Safe by design

Steps are data, not code. There's no way to run your own JavaScript in the browser, so a browser check can only do what the steps above describe. All of Chromium's traffic goes through a guard proxy that refuses private network addresses, so a check can't be pointed at our internal network or a cloud metadata service.

What to test with a browser check

• Sign-in with a dedicated test account, ending with "expect text" for something only a signed-in user sees.
• Search, ending with a check that results appear.
• The first steps of a checkout, up to the payment page.
• A single-page app that returns 200 for every URL, even when the JavaScript fails to load.

Keep checks short and point them at test data. A browser check that changes real data every five minutes soon becomes a problem of its own.

Limits and intervals

Browser checks run at most every 5 minutes, since each run starts a real browser. They're included from Essentials:

Alerts from browser checks go to your chosen channels or escalation policy, like any other monitor.