Alerts from Post-Production applications and macOS sent to the Pushover smartphone app.
“Is that file done yet?”
Working remotely, in the next room or out for a walk?
Need to know as soon as that export or transcode is finished?
Need to know about applications crashing, power going out with out knowing or drives failing or running out of space while you are away?
Now this and more is possible!
PostWatch uses the established subscription free service, for iOS and Android, Pushover to create a dedicated, clean and reliable experience for receiving alerts. What It does not do is clutter up your inbox with texts or emails that often get lost or forgotten.
PostWatch not only alerts you when 14 different Mac apps have completed exporting/encoding, it also monitors the Mac for issues; Such as accidental ejected disks, app crashes/freezes, power loss and more.
No plugins, special application settings or rendering to watch folders. (except setting a few system preferences) Export, render and transcode as you normally do and PostWatch does its magic in the background.
Now works with 14 post-production applications, including:
Plus a few legacy apps: Telestream Episode and Convergent Design Transfer.
Plus macOS Finder alerts for:
- Disks ejected improperly
- Disks full or near full
- Low bluetooth mouse/keyboard batteries
- Monitor the connection of a specified disk
- App crashes or freezes
- UPS AC power failure/restore
- Mac is booted or shut down
Works on macOS High Sierra through Monterey.
Pushover alerts from 14 different post-production apps 
A transfer failure notice from PostWatch 
macOS Notifications for Adobe, REDCINE-X Pro and more 
Menu Bar app for quick access to common options and easy control of the application 
Easy to understand preferences to control the application 
Full Pushover validation and testing to ensure connection to smartphone app. 
Receive alerts from macOS about crashed applications 
Receive alerts about export/encode failures 
List of applications available to view in Pushover
Changes in v2.7
- Now compatible with Adobe After Effects 2023. Still requires turning on logging in the Render Queue.
- Fixed rare Compressor error when cancelling a batch.
Give it a try!
I’m sharing it FREE with the post-production community
How does it work?
PostWatch is a menu bar application that uses a background helper that primarily watches macOS Notification Center for alerts from many popular post-production apps. For other apps that don’t use notifications, like After Effects or REDCINE-X Pro, PostWatch monitors background processes and history files for clues to the encoding status for each batch.
When PostWatch detects a completed process, it sends an alert to your phone via the Pushover mobile app. It also generates it’s own macOS Notifications (for apps that don’t natively support it) with helper scripts that make it appear that the original app sent the notification.
PostWatch also has other tools that monitor systems on the Mac to alert you to important events, like startup/shutdown, power outages (requires connected UPS), app crashes / freezes, disconnected / reconnected drives (accidental or a specified drive), wireless keyboard/mouse batteries are low, and more. I also have a feature that stores alerts when the internet connection is lost, then sends them when the connection is restored.
The Story
Like most post-production professionals I have had a roller coaster year; between working in the studio, then stuck at home with a makeshift edit bay on my kitchen table, then back to the studio working solo (with other staff at home) It’s been a challenge to say the least. But one thing I was needing, especially when trying to work through remote desktop software, was a way to be alerted when something was finished, crashed or failing.
It started from an idea that came from using the fantastic free Final Cut Pro assistant called CommandPost which has a nice feature that would send a push notification to a mobile phone when a Share was complete. But I wanted more. More apps to be precise. Then through some web searches I came across some AppleScripts that could help me build my own solution.
A few months later and a lot of real life testing I slowly came up with what I’m now calling PostWatch. This is an ongoing project that I use everyday and will continue to develop, add more applications and keep up with new macOS releases.
Now it’s ready to share with you.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge those individuals whose code I used in the making of my application; primarily from code sharing sites like Stackoverflow and Macscripter. Tj Luo, StefanK, JMichaelTX, Christopher Stone and Shane Stanley. Special thanks to Ted Wrigley for direct help.
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