The Auto Refresh Page extension comes with a powerful notification feature that helps you stay updated by notifying you when a specific keyword or phrase appears on a webpage. This is ideal for tracking changes or waiting for specific content to load without manually refreshing the page.

How to Use the Notification Feature:

  1. Open Chrome and navigate to the webpage you want to refresh.
  2. Open Auto Refresh Page, then go to Advanced Options.
  3. Check the option “Show notifications”.
  4. Enter a keyword or regular expression that you want Auto Refresh Page to look for after each refresh.
  5. Click “Start” to activate the refresh cycle.

Stopping the Refresh After Notification

You can stop the page from refreshing once the keyword is found. To do this, simply check the “Stop refresh” option under the “Show notifications” section. Once the keyword is detected, the extension will stop refreshing the page. You can manually reload the page or open it in a new browser session to resume refreshing.

Notify When a Keyword is NOT Found

For situations where you’re looking for the absence of a keyword, you can enable the “Not found” option. This will notify you only when the keyword does not appear on the page. This is useful when you’re waiting for a page to update, such as when an item becomes available for purchase, and you want to stop refreshing when the keyword disappears.

Example:

Imagine you’re monitoring an order page that says, “Please wait 10 minutes…”. To automate refreshing:

  • Set the refresh interval to 10 seconds.
  • Enable “Show notifications” and enter the keyword “Please wait”.
  • Enable “Stop refresh” and “Not found”.

With this setup, the page will refresh every 10 seconds. Once the message “Please wait” disappears, the refresh will stop, and you can place your order.

Notification Delay

If the page takes longer than expected to fully load, you can add a delay before checking for the keyword. This ensures the page content is fully loaded before Auto Refresh Page searches for the keyword.

  • Enter the desired delay in seconds (e.g., 3 seconds) in the Delay field.
  • This feature is helpful for pages that dynamically load content after a refresh (e.g., using AJAX, React, or Angular).

Keyword Examples:

  • Simple keyword match:
    • movie
    • white sneakers
  • Regular expression keyword match:
    • postd+ — matches “post2”, “post21”, “post68”
    • \d+/d+/d{4} — matches dates like “31/12/2021” or “3/8/2021”
  • Multiple keywords with OR:
    • music|audio — matches either “music” or “audio”
    • youtube music|comedian films — matches either “youtube music” or “comedian films”
  • Keyword with a wildcard:
    • Order.*Ready — matches any variation like “Order is Ready”, “Order Now Ready”, etc.
  • Keyword with delay after refresh:
    • find this keyword after delay [3] — waits 3 seconds after the page refresh before checking for the keyword.

Checking for Keywords in Visible Text:

By default, Auto Refresh Page checks for keywords within the entire page’s HTML (including tags). To limit the search to visible text only, add [TEXT] to your keyword.

  • Example: hello [TEXT] — This will search only the visible text on the page.

Handling Pages with Dynamic Content

For websites using dynamic content (AJAX, React, Angular), content may not load immediately after a refresh. To address this, you can specify a delay before checking for your keyword. This ensures the extension gives the page enough time to load fully, increasing the chances of detecting your keyword.

Note: With this setup, Auto Refresh Page will wait for the specified delay before it searches for the keyword, making it perfect for pages with slow loading times.

By utilizing the keyword search and notification system, you can fully automate your browsing experience, keeping you up-to-date with the content you care about without manual intervention.