Prime Day 2019: Don't miss a single deal when sales start

Amazon Prime Day 2019 is here -- running July 15 and 16 -- so you want to make sure you don't miss a deal during the final hours of the expansive 48-hour shopping event. This is your chance to walk away with the newest AirPods or an Amazon Kindle for a fraction of the everyday price. Over the final hours, Amazon will put tens and tens of thousands of products on sale for Prime Day -- some only available for a brief period of time and others in limited quantities.

CNET will closely monitor all the Amazon Prime Day deals as they pop up, so if you follow along with us, you'll be sure to not miss anything. But if you'd rather keep up with the the action yourself, you can set alerts for Amazon to notify you when an item you want goes on sale, so you can snap it up at the appropriate moment. (And to ensure you don't miss anything, we have a secret weapon.)

Watch this: Try this Amazon Assistant tool for Prime Day deals

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Read more: Amazon Prime Day sale bonanza kicks off July 15 and will run for 48 hours

You can grab a Prime Day deal if you have an Amazon Prime subscription, so make sure you're a member in good standing before the deals start. And if you're not a paying member, don't worry: You can sign up for a free Amazon Prime trial, which gets you all the benefits of a Prime subscription for 30 days -- including access to Prime Day deals -- and lets you cancel without paying at the end of the trial. An annual membership is $119 a year, or $12.99 a month. And college students can sign up for half that, after a six-month free trial.

Here are even more smart shopping tips to help you snag the best Prime Day deals. 

How to get alerts on Prime Day deals

Deals can happen at any hour during Prime Day -- and even before and after the fact -- so it's not a bad idea to spend some time identifying items you're interested in and then watch the deal in the Amazon Shopping app (Android and iOS) to receive notifications when they go on sale. That way, you won't miss a deal. Even better, the deals come to you, which may help keep your shopping stress level in check.

1. Set up an Amazon Prime Day deal alert on your phone.

2. In the Amazon Shopping app, tap the hamburger menu in the top-left corner and then tap Today's Deals.

3. In the Today's Deals window, tap the Upcoming tab (to the right of Right Now) and scroll through what's coming up.

4. When you find an item you want to set an alert for, tap Watch this deal below the item. The app may ask you to allow notifications if this is your first time.

5. To check on the status of the items you're watching, tap the Watching tab.

6. When the deal goes live, you can add the item to your cart or buy with 1-Click from the Watching tab.

7. And if you change your mind, tap Watching below the item to take it off your watch list.

When the deal goes live, the app will display a system notification alert and show the deal live on its home screen.

Monitor Prime Day deals from your computer

You can also monitor deals you're watching via the Amazon Assistant browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. Here's how to watch a deal with the Amazon Assistant browser extension.

1. Install the Amazon Assistant extension, which adds a button in your browser toolbar.

2. When a deal goes live, the button will display an alert showing the number of deals live. Click it to see your watched deal.

3. Through the browser extension, you can also view other deals you are watching and navigate to the Amazon website to manage your notifications.

4. And if you're shopping on another site, the extension can alert you if it found a better deal on Amazon.

To be honest, it's probably easier to manage deals via the Amazon Shopping app and just use the browser extension to be notified that a deal is live.

The strangest deals we saw on Amazon Prime Day 2018

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Originally published June 23.