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About this tool
Monitor new releases across the GitHub projects you choose to follow.
Release Watchtower looks up the newest published release of any public GitHub repository through the GitHub REST endpoint /repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases/latest and reports the tag, publish timestamp, prerelease flag and attached asset count. It is for developers and release managers who need to confirm what version a dependency is currently on without cloning the repo or logging into GitHub. Paste either an owner/repo pair such as vercel/next.js or a full github.com URL and you get the current answer plus a link to the release page.
Open Release Watchtower on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
In the Lookup field enter the repository as owner/repo - vercel/next.js is the default - or paste a github.com URL, which is trimmed to owner/repo.
Press Get current result; the tool calls GitHub's /repos/{owner}/{repo}/releases/latest endpoint and shows Checking source... while the request runs.
Current result prints Repository, Tag, Published, Prerelease and Assets rows, the fetch time, and a Source link straight to that GitHub release page.
Accepts a bare owner/repo or a pasted github.com URL and normalises it before querying, so you do not have to hunt through the Releases tab.
Tag, publish time, prerelease status and asset count sit in one table instead of being spread across the release page.
Every result carries the fetch timestamp and a direct link to the GitHub release it came from, so you can verify it in one click.
Enter the repository as owner/repo — for example vercel/next.js — and request a current reading; the tool returns the release tag, its published date and a link to the release page. It reads GitHub's own latest-release endpoint, so the answer matches what the Releases page shows.
No. GitHub's latest-release endpoint returns the most recent release that is neither a draft nor a prerelease, sorted by creation date, so beta and release-candidate tags are excluded. The result table still shows a Prerelease row so you can see how the release is flagged.
No — it checks on demand when you request a reading, and does not run in the background or send alerts. Each result is stamped with the time it was fetched, so re-run the check whenever you need a fresh answer.
Usually because the repository is private, has no published releases at all, or the owner/repo spelling is wrong. Projects that only push git tags without creating GitHub Releases return nothing from this endpoint even though tags exist; GitHub's public API rate limits can also cause a temporary failure.