This App Alerts You When Major Sites Go Down

Today's outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) took much of the web with it for several hours, affecting sites including Fortnite, Reddit, Snapchat, Venmo, and Amazon itself. This wasn't the first time and might not be the last. On June 13, 2023, for example, an AWS outage lasting more than two hours took down or hampered a menagerie of sites including the The Associated Press, New York City's MTA public transit system, and the ordering apps for McDonald’s and Taco Bell. Outages have also happened at the other two major hosting services in the US: Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

But when a website you need, such as Google Docs, doesn't come up, how do you know if there's a major outage or it's a glitch on your end? Instead of wasting time continually hitting reload, restarting your browser, restarting your computer, or troubleshooting your WiFi or VPN, you can now get alerts soon after a site goes down – for free.

Read more: The Best VPNs for Protecting Your Privacy

Last January, Ookla upgraded its popular Speedtest internet speed app by adding Downdetector, which tracks glitches on the internet. Now, all you have to do is download the free Speedtest mobile app and create an account. You can then choose the sites you want to keep an eye on, see their current status, and enable alerts for when they are having trouble or experiencing a full outage.

Here's a step-by-step guide (the same for iOS and Android) for setting up a watchlist and alerts in Speedtest's Downdetector service.

1. Download the Speedtest app for Android or iOS.
2. Click "Downdetector" at the bottom of the home screen.
3. View the status of sites on the next screen by selecting from the list or major sites or searching by name.
4. Click "Sign in" on the following screen to log into your existing Speedtest account, or click Create Account to set up a new one. You can enter an email address and create a password, or click Continue with Apple on iOS devices or Continue with Google on iOS or Android.
5. You will then return to the screen in step 3, but now you can click the star next to each site name to add it to your favorites. (You can select up to 20.)
6. Allow notifications on the following screen to get push alerts when one of your favorite sites is having problems.
7. Find something else to do when a site goes down.

Read more: How to Keep Your Smart Home from Bogging Down Your Entire Internet

[Image credit: Screenshots by Sean Captain/Techlicious]

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