Refresh Pilot Docs

Your first auto-refresh

Sixty seconds, start to finish: open a page, pick how often, press Start — and the page reloads itself while a little bubble counts down. Here's the whole walkthrough, plus three ways to stop.

shop.example.com/sneakers
5 auto-refresh

This is the goal: the page reloads on its own, and the overlay bubble shows the countdown to the next reload.

ℹ️ Just installed? A dashboard tab opened itself in guest mode (Guest User · Not signed in) — it mirrors this browser's settings live. You can ignore or close it for now: this first auto-refresh needs only the popup, and no account.

The 60-second walkthrough

  1. Open the page you want to keep fresh — a sold-out product, a ticket queue, a live blog, a work dashboard.
  2. Click the Refresh Pilot icon in your toolbar. The popup opens on its Interval tab. (Icon not visible? See pinning the icon.)
  3. Pick how often. The big stepper starts at 30 seconds — a good first choice. Or tap a preset chip: 5s, 10s, 30s, 1m, 5m, 15m. More on this in Refresh intervals.
  4. Press Start. The popup closes and the page begins refreshing.
  5. Watch the overlay. A small pill appears in the bottom-right corner of the page: a countdown to the next reload, a ×count of refreshes so far, and pause/stop buttons.
ℹ️ Pressing Start also saves your choices as your last-used settings — the keyboard shortcut and the Timer tab reuse them later, so your first Start teaches Refresh Pilot your preferences.

Three ways to stop

  • On the page — click the button on the overlay pill. (The ❚❚ button next to it pauses instead.)
  • From the popup — click the icon again and press Stop.
  • From the keyboard — press Alt+Shift+R. This shortcut toggles: it stops a running refresh, and starts one (with your last-used settings) when nothing is running.
AltShiftR

Alt+Shift+R starts or stops auto-refresh on the tab you're looking at — no popup needed.

Where to go from here

Refreshing is only half the story. The toolbar icon shows a live countdown badge while a tab refreshes, and the monitor can watch the page for a keyword — "in stock", a price, an appointment — and alert you the moment it appears, so you don't have to watch the screen at all.

💡 Next: take a tour of the popup to see what the header buttons and the four tabs do.