Simon 5.2b1 released

Surprise! It’s been three years since the previous update of Simon, my pro-level website and server monitoring tool, but here’s the first beta release of version 5.2.

This update includes support for macOS Tahoe, including making all components universal, so they work on Apple silicon and Intel-based Macs. Plus improvements to the Web Page service, the tests list, the Preview pane, and several services, filters, and notifiers, amongst other changes.

This is a beta release, but should be safe for anyone to install. If mission-critical, you might want to hold off for now, though, or install on another Mac. I would appreciate help in testing this update. Please let me know if you find any issues, or have any feature requests.

Read on for details.

Support for Tahoe

Updated the app to work better with macOS Tahoe (26.x).

Now requires macOS Monterey (12.4) or later.

All components are now universal, so work on Apple silicon and Intel-based Macs; a requirement for macOS 27.

Improved Web Page Service

The Web Page service now handles errors better when using the option to capture the rendered source.

Instead of resulting in a failure if the initial fetch gives an error, it waits for the rendered page to finish, and determines the result and HTML from that.

If the loaded HTML has an error, it tries to do a clean load, ignoring the provided headers, to match the preview shown.

Tests list refinements

Simplified the time ranges in the tests list when using relative times; instead of showing “10 min, 18 sec ago (3 secs)” for the last check time (and duration), it now just shows “checked 10 min (3 secs)”; the extra units didn’t add much value, and including “checked” makes it more clear what this value is.

Similarly the time of the last change is now displayed as “changed 2 hr ago”.

If a test doesn’t have any filters, it instead shows “changes not filtered”.

When a test is currently failing, it now omits the empty recovery time, so just shows the failure time like “failed 7 min ago”.

When a test has recovered, it now shows the duration in addition to the failure and recovery times, e.g. “failed 45 min to 6 min ago (39 mins)”.

Since Simon has been around for 14 years, fixed logic that assumed dates over 10 years were not sensible.

Preview improvements

Fixed remembering and restoring the Preview pane position when switching between tests with a web preview (like Web Page ones) and just a transcript (like Ping).

Fixed Check Now not checking all or multiple selected tests when the Preview pane is visible.

Changed the Preview message for the Notifiers list to clarify to use File ▸ Notify Now or the reload toolbar button to try a notifier.

Updated variables

Renamed {TestFailureCount} as {TestErrorCount}: the current failure/error streak.

Renamed {TestRecoveryCount} as {TestRecoveredCount}: the current recovery count.

Added {TestCheckCount}: the total number of times the test has been checked.

Added {TestSuccessCount}: the total number of successful checks.

Added {TestFailureCount}: the total number of failed checks.

Added {TestRecoveryCount}: the total number of recoveries from a failure.

Other changes

Fixed the Application service when checking if an app is running; it was previously timing out.

Improved the Application service output to sort the values alphabetically, so checking multiple times won’t trigger a spurious change.

Fixed the Get Average Ping Response Time filter; it was giving an error before.

Fixed the test editor summary sometimes listing the “Block” filter as “BlockBlock”.

Fixed the Setup Assistant showing the page to import web bookmarks on first run.

Fixed notifiers sometimes not firing when syncing is off, especially ones from versions prior to 5.0.

Updated the default Dejal Reddit test to work based on recent Reddit changes (the filters needed adjusting).

Want to try it?

If you are using the direct edition, you can change your Updates settings to include beta releases, then use the Check for Updates feature in the app to update.

Otherwise, download the beta now!