Monitors: scheduled captures without writing a cron job
Set up a recurring screenshot of any URL from the dashboard, then browse the history to see how a page changed over time.
In 5 ways to automate website screenshots we showed how to wire up cron jobs and CI pipelines. Those are great when you already have infrastructure. When you just want "take a picture of this page every morning", Monitors are faster.
Setting one up
- Open Monitors in the dashboard and click New monitor.
- Enter the URL and pick a schedule.
- Choose capture options - format, viewport, full page, blocking - the same ones the API supports.
That is it. Snapopa runs the capture on schedule and stores each result.
Reviewing the history
Each monitor keeps a timeline of its captures. Step through them to see when a banner appeared, a price changed, or a layout broke. Because every capture uses identical settings, differences you see are differences in the page, not in how it was rendered.
Good fits
- Competitor tracking. Pricing and feature pages, captured daily.
- Compliance. A dated visual record of terms, disclosures or cookie notices.
- Your own site. Catch the deploy that broke the hero on mobile before a customer does.
Monitors or the API?
Use Monitors when a person will look at the results. Use the API - with a scheduler, a permalink with refreshInterval, or CI - when the result feeds into another system.