Three channels so a missed check-in never goes unnoticed. Pick the ones that fit your life — you can change them anytime in Settings.
Eternal Sentinel only contacts you about three things. Everything else happens silently on schedule.
Sent on your schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly). One tap or click confirms you’re OK and resets your timer.
Sent if you miss a check-in. Up to three escalating warnings, each on every channel you have enabled, before the next stage.
Sent during the proof-of-life hold — your last 72 hours to respond before your trustees are contacted. Goes to every channel, including backup email/phone if set.
Use one. Use all three. We recommend at least two so a dead phone, a full inbox, or a missed notification doesn’t become a missed check-in.
On by default. Goes to the email you signed up with, plus a backup address if you’ve added one.
Free • always on
Text messages to your phone. Useful when you don’t check email often or want a louder alert.
Premium • opt-in
Lock-screen alerts on your phone. Bypasses email and SMS — fastest way to know it’s time to check in.
Free • opt-in
Email is on the moment you sign up — no setup needed. Alerts go to the address you used to create your account.
Add a backup email so the proof-of-life pass has a second inbox to reach. Useful if your primary address gets deactivated or inboxed-to-death by a vacation autoreply. Go to Settings → Account and fill in the backup email field.
Make sure our sender isn’t in spam. Add alerts@onceimgone.com to your contacts so reminders don’t get filtered.
SMS is included with the Premium plan ($9/month). To enable:
+15551234567).Note: SMS uses Twilio. Carrier filters very occasionally block long-form short codes. If you don’t get a test message, confirm your number is correct and check whether your carrier is blocking US short codes.
Push delivers to your phone’s lock screen, the same way Messages or Slack do. There’s a one-time install step on iPhone — after that, it’s the fastest channel.
Apple only allows push notifications from web apps that have been added to your Home Screen. You’ll do this once, then push works forever on that device.
Open Eternal Sentinel in Safari
This only works in Safari, not Chrome or Firefox on iPhone. Visit onceimgone.com and log in.
Tap the Share button
It’s in the Safari toolbar — a square with an arrow pointing up. On older iPhones it’s at the bottom of the screen; on iPad it’s top-right.
Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen
Confirm the name (“Eternal Sentinel”) and tap Add. A new icon appears on your Home Screen.
Open the app from your Home Screen icon
Not from Safari. The icon launches the app in its own window — push only works in that mode.
Go to Settings → Companion app and tap Enable on this device
iOS will ask permission to send notifications. Tap Allow. Your device is now registered.
On the polling tab, turn Push Notifications on
This is the channel preference — registering the device alone isn’t enough. Both have to be on.
No install step needed — Chrome on Android supports push out of the box.
onceimgone.com in Chrome and log in.Optional: install as an app via Chrome’s “Install app” menu item — gives you a launcher icon, same as iOS, but push works either way.
Push also works on desktop Chrome, Edge, and Firefox — alerts appear as system notifications (top-right on macOS, bottom-right on Windows).
Same flow as Android: Settings → Companion app → Enable on this device, allow when prompted, then flip the polling-tab toggle. Safari on Mac is supported too — push works without installing the site as an app.
Push notifications need both of these to be on:
Registers this specific device to receive push. Each phone, tablet, or browser you want alerts on needs its own registration.
The channel-level preference. Flip this off and no push fires on any of your registered devices — useful for a digital-detox weekend without un-registering everything.
You’re almost certainly opening the site in Safari rather than the installed Home Screen icon. iOS only exposes the “Enable” button when the app is launched from its Home Screen icon (the standalone PWA shell).
Fix: complete steps 1–4 of the iPhone setup above. If the Home Screen icon is already there, close Safari and tap the icon directly.
Check all of these in order:
Still nothing? Revoke the device from Settings → Companion app, then tap Enable on this device again. That issues a fresh subscription.
Check-in reminders and escalation warnings now stay on the lock screen until you act on them. If yours are still auto-dismissing, you may be on an older app version — pull-to-refresh inside the app and try again. The OS itself can still auto-clear after a long idle period; that’s by design and not configurable from our end.
Two common causes:
Not configurable per-event yet — push is on or off as a channel. If you want quieter alerting, leave push on for check-in reminders and rely on email for escalations (or vice versa). Granular per-event channel preferences are on our roadmap.