WatchdogWindows / Free
A background tool for digital signage, media installations, and kiosks. It watches your app and restarts it automatically the moment it stops responding.
No need to drive to the venue when something freezes overnight.
A single .exe. No installer, nothing written to the registry. Unzip it next to config.json and run.
Getting started
- Place
watchdog.exeandconfig.jsonin the same folder - Run
watchdog.exe(it lives in the system tray) - Open
http://localhost:4649in a browser - Add the apps you want to monitor from the Web UI
Monitoring methods
| Method | How it works | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Process | Checks the process is alive by PID | Most apps |
| Window | Checks a window with a given title exists | GUI apps |
| UDP | Listens for a heartbeat sent by the app | Custom apps (e.g. TouchDesigner) |
| HTTP | Polls a health-check URL | Apps with a built-in web server (e.g. Unity) |
| File | Checks a file's timestamp keeps updating | Apps that write output files |
When an app stops responding, Watchdog kills and restarts it. If restarts keep failing, the retry interval backs off automatically (30s up to 5min), so a false positive can't trap the machine in a restart loop.
Built for the field
- Choose how apps stop — force kill / save with Ctrl+S then quit / send an OSC command then quit
- Scheduled uptime — per-app start/stop by day and time, including overnight windows
- Network commands — send UDP / OSC / PJLINK at a scheduled time (e.g. projector power on/off)
- MadMapper / TouchDesigner aware — correctly handles single-instance apps without false restarts or duplicate launches
- Slack notifications — restarts, unrecovered failures, and launch errors, tagged with the site name
- Config export/import — easy backup and cloning to another machine
- Also supports scheduled PC reboot and launch on Windows startup
Everything above is free — there's no paid tier or feature gate. Full configuration details are in the README.
Requirements
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise or Windows 11.
Support development
Watchdog is free and open source, and will stay that way.
If it's saved you a trip to a venue, consider supporting continued development via GitHub Sponsors.
Contact
Bug reports and feature requests: GitHub Issues, or email support@dougu.dev.