Once you've launched Workbench on a machine at least once, Watchdog starts running in the background on that machine. From then on, it keeps checking in, and if the app crashes, freezes, or stops responding, it relaunches it automatically. This also means it can let another one of your devices restart it remotely, so you're not stuck waiting for someone to walk over and fix it in person.

When a remote machine's Workbench app isn't responding, any device trying to connect to it will show a Relaunch button in place of the usual Connect button.

Separate from the automatic Watchdog behavior, every Workbench app (Mac, iPhone, and iPad) has a small arrow icon that lets you manually force a relaunch at any time, even if Watchdog hasn't stepped in on its own yet. This is useful if a connection feels stuck or isn't behaving as expected, and you don't want to wait.

You may also see this prompt come up on its own: if a connection attempt spins for 10 to 15 seconds without connecting, the app will ask if you'd like to retry or force a relaunch, since the remote machine's app may be hung. This is expected behavior and usually resolves the connection right away.

No. Watchdog does not send a notification. It simply relaunches the Workbench app on the remote Mac when it detects the app has hung or stopped responding, so the connection can be recovered without anyone needing to be at the main Mac.

This is part of the same Automatic Recovery behavior described below, which is on by default and can be turned off in Workbench settings.

Watchdog is controlled by the Automatic Recovery setting.

To turn it off:

To turn it back on:

Turning this off stops the background helper entirely. That means the machine won't relaunch itself if it crashes or stops responding, and it also won't be able to be restarted remotely from another device. Most customers will want to leave this on, especially for machines that aren't attended in person, but it's there to turn off if needed.