# Keep Every Page Alive (keepalive.page)

> A free, install-free browser tool that keeps an idle login warm with a timed reload — or holds an OSHA/SCORM training player in place without advancing the course. You enter a URL and an interval. Reload opens that site in a tab and reloads it on a timer so the site's idle (inactivity) timeout resets. Hold in place never navigates: it moves the pointer, focuses the page, may click a non-control surface, and keeps a video that was already playing. It does not click Next or Continue, submit a form, answer a quiz or attention check, or certify a course.

Also called "keepalive.page". Runs entirely client-side in any modern browser on any OS. No account, no ads, no cross-site tracking. The website records self-hosted, cookieless pageview counts (Plausible CE), plus the bare hostname of a public site when a user adds one — never the full address, never intranet or local addresses, and never on refreshes. The kept-page list itself stays on the user's device. The only server-side component for the public tool is a small counter that powers the on-site leaderboard: it stores a public hostname and a running total, nothing more (no visitor identifier, no IP address), and a hostname only surfaces once several people have added it.

## What it does

- Two strategies: **Reload the tab** (ordinary idle logins) and **Hold in place** (OSHA 10/30 and similar SCORM shells such as ClickSafety, CareerSafe, 360training, HSI).
- Auto-refreshes a page you give it, on an interval you choose — or holds it without navigating.
- Interval presets in ordinary minutes; an optional "prime stagger" mode uses the prime numbers from 17 to 887 seconds (primes rarely share factors, so multiple kept pages don't sync into simultaneous reloads); custom intervals accept any integer with units from seconds up to centuries.
- Keeps any number of pages alive at once; each can be paused, refreshed or nudged immediately, re-timed, or released.
- Fine tuning: ±15% interval jitter; hard refresh (cache-busting query parameter); a leash that stops a page after N refreshes or at a set time; opt-in desktop notification when a kept page stops being refreshable.
- The tab title carries a live countdown and a warning mark if any kept page needs attention.
- The kept-page list can be exported/imported as JSON, and links like https://keepalive.page/?url=example.com&every=10m arrive pre-filled. Hold can be preselected with `?strategy=hold`.
- A screen wake lock ("Keep screen awake") holds the display awake while pages are being kept alive.
- An on-site leaderboard shows which public hostnames get kept alive most, tallied across everyone who uses the tool (hostname + count only, no visitor identifier), plus a local activity log, a per-watch nickname, and a one-click pause for every running watch at once.

## The key technical facts (accurate as of 2026)

- **Refreshing defeats idle timeouts only.** An inactivity timeout is measured from the last HTTP request the server received for a given session ID (per the OWASP Session Management guidance), so a genuine reload resets it.
- **Hold in place keeps an OSHA/SCORM player from idling** without navigating, clicking Next/Continue, or answering a quiz or attention check. Pasting a recognised training URL selects Hold automatically.
- **Hold events are synthetic** (`isTrusted: false`). A player that requires a real device hand still wins.
- **It cannot defeat:** an absolute/time-boxed session lifetime (expires a fixed period after login regardless of activity); auth that depends on rotating a short-lived token rather than on page activity; sites that detect real mouse/keyboard input; daily seat-time caps or exams; or systems that continuously re-evaluate access.
- **A reload discards unsaved work** in that tab — form input, in-progress uploads, unsaved edits, and place/video position in a training player.
- **A website cannot see or reload a browser tab it did not open.** The same-origin policy isolates sites from each other, so no web page can enumerate or control your other tabs. This is a platform security boundary, not a missing feature. From this page alone, Hold can reach a tab only while that tab stays on keepalive.page; other sites need the macOS helper or the browser extension.
- **Embedding a third-party site in an iframe usually fails**, because most logged-in sites send `X-Frame-Options` or a CSP `frame-ancestors` directive that forbids framing; cross-origin `fetch()` also cannot read responses without CORS opt-in. Hence the tool opens a real tab and re-navigates it (Reload) or pulses it in place (Hold).
- **Background tabs are throttled.** Browsers clamp timers in hidden tabs (Chrome intensively throttles chained timers to roughly once per minute after a tab is hidden for 5 minutes), so the tool runs its clock in a Web Worker and favours intervals over a minute. Chrome Memory Saver and similar features can still freeze or discard a hidden tab, which pauses it — pinning the tab and adding a performance exception avoids this.
- **This will not keep Microsoft Teams or Webex status green.** Presence is computed from device activity, not from a refreshing tab.

## Recommended usage

For ordinary idle logins: pick an interval roughly two-thirds of the site's idle window (e.g. every 20 minutes for a 30-minute timeout). Refreshing far more often is usually wasteful and sometimes useless: ASP.NET Core cookie auth re-issues the session cookie only on a request more than halfway through the window, and Salesforce ignores activity in the first half — so an early refresh renews nothing and the session expires on schedule. Pin the controlling tab and keep the machine awake.

For OSHA 10/30 and SCORM players: choose **Hold in place** (or paste the course URL and let the tool select it). Use the extension or macOS helper for a course already open on another site. Hold keeps the player from a stupid idle logout while *you* watch; it does not complete, skip, or certify the course.

## Caveats and ethics

Idle timeouts frequently exist as a security or compliance control, particularly on banking, healthcare, and shared-account systems. Deliberately defeating one may breach a site's terms of service, and a held-open session on a shared or unattended device is a real security risk. Users should check the relevant terms before relying on this for anything sensitive.

Hold is marketed as keeping the player from idling out while you watch — never as cheating an LMS, skipping seat time, auto-completing OSHA training, passing an attention check, or finishing the course for you.

## Pages

- [The tool](https://keepalive.page/): Reload and Hold, plus an explainer covering idle vs absolute timeouts and honest limits.
- [OSHA / SCORM Hold](https://keepalive.page/osha-scorm.html): when to Hold vs Reload for OSHA 10/30 players, vendor notes, limits, and a CTA into the tool with Hold preselected.
- [How it works](https://keepalive.page/how-it-works.html): setup steps for Reload and for Hold, the two-thirds interval rule, fine tuning, and the FAQ (including Teams/Webex, attention checks, and why a website cannot see your other tabs).
- [Compare](https://keepalive.page/compare.html): honest short comparison vs Session Alive and Easy Auto Refresh — when reload destroys progress, and what keepalive refuses.
- [The Blacklist](https://keepalive.page/refusals.html): named targets where refreshing is compiled to fail on purpose (Atlassian, Citrix, Microsoft sign-in, Google Workspace Admin, Teams/Webex, Okta/VPN), plus categories it can't detect but that still won't work.
- [The Whitelist](https://keepalive.page/directory.html): named apps and platforms with documented session timeouts, each classified as idle / absolute / token-based / activity-detected, plus Hold-verdict rows for ClickSafety, CareerSafe, 360training and HSI. Every timeout cites vendor documentation.
- [What else it keeps alive](https://keepalive.page/uses.html): unusual, niche and off-the-wall uses for a timed page refresh — wall dashboards, kiosks, live feeds, random-article screens — plus an explicit list of uses refused (metric inflation, poll stuffing, paywall-meter resets, scarce-inventory sniping).
- [Download](https://keepalive.page/download.html): the desktop app for macOS, Windows and Linux, plus clairvoyant mode — an optional, free macOS helper (a single Node script run locally, also downloadable on its own) that lists the tabs you already have open across Chrome, Safari, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi and Opera and reloads or holds them in place on a schedule. macOS only for the helper; Firefox cannot be enumerated because it exposes no AppleScript interface. Requires granting macOS Automation permission per browser. The browser extension works on any OS for tabs you already have open.
- [Support](https://keepalive.page/support.html): free for now; tip / fund-sophistication path when you want to support the work without a paywall on Hold or Reload.