cronatron

Schedule commands on macOS using launchd — a friendlier interface to launchctl.

crontab is too simple! launchd is too complex! cronatron is just right!

# Every 30 seconds
cronatron register "echo hello" --every 30

# Every day at 9:00 AM
cronatron register "echo hello" --hour 9 --minute 0

# Weekdays at 8:30 AM
cronatron register "echo hello" --hour 8 --minute 30 --weekday 1,2,3,4,5

Installation

uv tool install cronatron

# or run without installing
uvx cronatron

Usage

Scheduling

Jobs can be scheduled with calendar flags or an interval:

Calendar flags (--minute, --hour, --day, --weekday, --month) accept comma-separated values and can be combined. --every accepts a number of seconds. The two modes are mutually exclusive.

--name      -n   Label shown in list output (defaults to the command)
--minute    -m   0–59 (comma-separated)
--hour      -h   0–23 (comma-separated)
--day       -d   1–31 (comma-separated)
--weekday   -w   0–7  (comma-separated, 0 = Sunday)
--month     -M   1–12 (comma-separated)
--every     -e   Run every N seconds
--verbose   -v   Print underlying launchctl commands

Examples

# Register a named job that runs every minute
cronatron register "date >> /tmp/out.txt" --every 60 --name "timestamp"

# List jobs
cronatron list

# Tail logs for a job
cronatron logs <job-id> --follow

# Run a job right now
cronatron trigger <job-id>

# Pause / resume
cronatron pause <job-id>
cronatron resume <job-id>

# Remove a job
cronatron unregister <job-id>

# Remove everything (with confirmation prompt)
cronatron reset

State

Plists are stored in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and logs are written to ~/.cronatron/logs/<job-id>.log.