In short
- Monitoring runs on our servers, not on your device: you are warned even if the app is closed and the phone is in your pocket.
- Three families of alerts: the server stopped responding, it is back, your subscription expires soon (a week before, three days before, the day before).
- An 'offline' alert is only sent after confirmation: an isolated miss by the server does not wake you up.
On this page
The problem with an IPTV outage is not the outage. It is the moment you discover it: Saturday night, everyone settled in, remote in hand. At that moment nobody diagnoses, everybody gets annoyed. IPTV Guard's monitoring exists to move that moment: learn about the outage on your phone, during the day, and have time to do something before the evening.
What is monitored
When you add a playlist, IPTV Guard starts checking regularly, from its own servers, that your provider's server responds and that your subscription is recognised. It is a light check: a question asked of the server, not a playback. It takes none of your connections and does not depend on your device.
That point matters: monitoring does not run on your phone. The app can be closed, the phone asleep, the TV off, the check happens anyway. That is what makes the notification useful: it arrives before you need the TV, not once you are already in front of it.
In addition, channel health is measured per category, with short probes spread over time. That is what feeds the status indicators in the app. Those probes are paced to leave your slots free, and even more careful when you have just used the app.
The three alerts
The server stopped responding. You get a notification when your provider's server stops answering, or when it answers that your account is no longer valid. One alert per incident, not one per check.
It is back. When the server answers again, a second notification tells you so, with the length of the interruption. You know it is over without having to test.
The subscription expires. For Xtream Codes subscriptions, whose server reports the end date, you are warned a week before, three days before, and the day before. An email three days before backs up the notification, in case the phone is not at hand. It is the most valuable alert: a renewal done on time avoids an entire outage.
Each alert is sent in the app's language.
Why you are not woken up for nothing
An IPTV server sometimes misses a request without being down: a second of saturation, a restart, a hiccuping router. Sending an alert for every miss would make monitoring a source of noise, and you would end up turning it off.
An "offline" alert is therefore only sent after confirmation: the server has to fail again, on a check made specifically to settle it. An isolated miss is ignored. What you receive is an established outage, not a fluctuation.
In the other direction, once a server is down, checks space out instead of hammering it, then tighten again as soon as it shows signs of life. You do not get ten alerts for one night of interruption.
How to read each alert
"Your playlist is not responding." Do not reinstall anything, do not delete the playlist. Three cases cover almost everything: the provider has an outage, and the back-online alert will follow; the provider changed address, and probably wrote to you about it; your account was disabled or expired, and that is something to sort out with them. The checker tells you which in thirty seconds.
"Your playlist is back." Nothing to do. If the reported duration is short and it keeps happening, your provider has an unstable server: that is information about them, not about you.
"Your subscription expires in 3 days." Renew with the provider before the date. If you already renewed and the alert persists, the server has not updated the date yet: it corrects itself at the next check.
What monitoring does not cover
So you do not expect from it what it does not do:
- One dead channel among a thousand. Monitoring checks the server and the subscription, not every channel permanently. A channel that does not load while the others work belongs to the classic diagnosis.
- A block specific to your network. If the server answers from our machines but not from your router, monitoring says "online", and it is right. That is the case of the guide works on mobile data but not on Wi-Fi.
- A slot taken by another device. A subscription in use elsewhere is not a server outage. The player tells you at the moment of the cut, but monitoring has nothing to report: the server is fine.
- An M3U playlist without a date. Without Xtream Codes, the server does not report the end date, so no expiry alert. Availability alerts, however, work.
Adjusting or turning off
Everything happens in the app's notification settings. Playlist alerts have their own switch, independent of content alerts (new movies, episodes) and match alerts. So you can keep "warn me if it goes down" and turn off the rest, or the other way round.
A playlist disabled in the app is no longer monitored. A deleted one neither, and its history goes with it.
In IPTV Guard
Everything is set in the app's notification settings, playlist alerts category. One switch, nothing to configure: monitoring starts as soon as the playlist is added.
Frequently asked questions
Does monitoring use one of my connections?
No. The availability check queries the server without starting any stream. The probes that measure channel health are brief and paced to leave your slots free, even more so when you have just used the app.
Can my provider see that my playlist is monitored?
It sees ordinary requests, of the same kind an app sends when opening. Nothing that looks like playback, nothing more frequent than normal use.
I got an offline alert but it works for me.
The server was unreachable from our machines at that moment. If everything works for you, it either came back in between, or it is a partial outage on the provider's side. The back-online alert will follow.
I did not get an alert although it was not working.
Monitoring checks the server, not every channel every minute. One dead channel among a thousand, or a block specific to your network, does not take the server down and does not trigger an alert. See the outage guide for those cases.
Can I turn off the alerts without turning off other notifications?
Yes. Playlist alerts, content alerts and match alerts each have their own switch in the notification settings.