webchanges 

webchanges anonymously checks web content (including images) and commands for changes, delivering instant notifications and AI-powered summaries to your favorite platform.

Highlights

Watch anything: web pages (in a real browser if needed), APIs, local files and command output.
Track only what matters with over 30 filters.
Read changes at a glance in formatted HTML, side by side, word by word, as AI summaries and more.
Get notified anywhere: email, Telegram, Discord, ntfy, webhooks and more.
Few false alarms: transient errors can be held back and repeated ones reported once.
Runs on your machine, total privacy, no account needed, and extends with Python hooks.

Requirements

webchanges requires . For the best experience, use the current version of Python; older Python versions are supported for 3 years after they’re replaced. Free-threaded Python is supported.

For Generative AI summaries (BETA), you need a free API Key from Google Cloud AI Studio (see here).

Installation

Install webchanges with uv (recommended):

uv pip install webchanges

or with pip:

pip install webchanges

On Windows with Python 3.15, first run set PYYAML_FORCE_LIBYAML=0 (in PowerShell: $env:PYYAML_FORCE_LIBYAML = "0"), as explained here.

Other ways to run

In a Docker container: a minimal implementation (no browser) is here, and one with a browser is here.
As a GitHub Action: an implementation is here.

Documentation 

The documentation is hosted on Read the Docs.

Quick Start

Initialize

Run the following command to create the default config.yaml (configuration) and jobs.yaml (jobs) files and open an editor to add your jobs:
```
webchanges --edit-jobs
```
Run the following command to change the default configuration, e.g. to receive change notifications (”reports”) by email and/or one of many other methods:
```
webchanges --edit-config
```

Run

To check the sources in your jobs and report on (e.g. display or via email) any changes found from the last time the program ran, just run:

webchanges

Schedule

webchanges leverages the power of a system scheduler:

On Linux you can use cron, with the help of a tool like crontab.guru (help here);
On Windows you can use Windows Task Scheduler;
On macOS you can use launchd (help here).

Code

The code, issues tracker, and discussions are hosted on GitHub.

Contributing

We welcome any contribution no matter how small, both as pull requests or issue reports.

More information for code and documentation contributors is here, and our wishlist is here.

License

See the complete licenses (released under the MIT License but redistributing modified source code, dated 30 July 2020, from urlwatch 2.21 licensed under a BSD 3-Clause License).

Relationship with urlwatch

This project is a fork of urlwatch 2.21 and has since added many features; see the comparison.