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Is there any easy way to schedule repeated jobs in Mac OS X? I know I could use cron, but I'm looking for a more user friendly way to do it, a GUI for schedules, something like this.

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8 Answers

up vote 37 down vote accepted

You can schedule jobs via iCal. Create an event. Edit the event, and you'll see "Run Script" and "Open File" as options as alarms.

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+1 because I learned something new. – hanleyp Sep 22 '09 at 15:13
+1 for mentioning this question at superuser.com/questions/102979/… :-) – Arjan Jan 31 '10 at 19:10
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Not anymore. Mountain Lion has broken this. – Robert Ryan Jul 27 '12 at 1:13
It may support the feature under ML because the event has an option for "Open File", so I presume that allows you to run custom script. But I can't, because I set up my iCal to sync with Google Calendar, and Google simply revert the notification back to default. – Antony Sep 23 '12 at 15:02
up vote 11 down vote

Well, there's CronniX, Maintidget, Macaroni and MacJanitor.

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Have you tried using one of the launchd instead of cron? Apparently, Apple doesn't use cron anymore.

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Yes, use Launchd over cron!!! – The Tentacle Sep 24 '09 at 18:36
up vote 5 down vote

Lingon is a GUI for creating and working with launchd. It's no longer being worked on, but works well for creating and editing Launch Agents and if you are on Leopard or Snow Leopard it's the suggested method over cron.

enter image description here

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Lingon 3 is now available for Lion, so it is being updated. – Jamie Forrest Nov 16 '11 at 4:18
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Lingon X is now available for Mountain Lion. – raxacoricofallapatorius Feb 10 at 21:00
up vote 3 down vote

This solution does use crontab but makes it user-friendly by using the Automator

Adding a calendar event tends to clog up iCal for me. I'm using a combination of Automator and crontab.

On the Automator part, I'm recording each action I need to perform as an app (Automator > File > New > Application Template) and save it to a convenient location (File > Save as). Make sure you save it as an Application and not Workflow.

Then it's just a case of adding a cronjob for it:

0 * * * *  open /path/to/the/save/automator/app

Friendly would be nice, but right now I'm just looking for something that will run an application at a specified time on specified days -- or even every day -- under Snow Leopard, which ignores my old cron file.

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The OP wants something more user-friendly than cron, and you suggest... cron? – Daniel Beck♦ Oct 29 '10 at 11:33
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Mea culpa! I was only trying to provide my solution to this problem. – Pardel Oct 29 '10 at 11:53
up vote 1 down vote

Have a look at Task Till Down.

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Requires Java, which is no longer installed with OS X by default. – Daniel Beck♦ Feb 17 '12 at 16:40
up vote 1 down vote

You could try Auto Scheduled Task for Mac http://www.readmesoft.com/mac

Run a application, open a file, or apple script, automator workflow by schedule

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up vote 0 down vote

How about Crontooie, a GUI frontend for cron:

alt text

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Is someone having a bad day or what? This is getting annoying. – John T Feb 1 '10 at 1:50
up vote 0 down vote

You can supplement the use of iCal with the use of Automator (ships with Mac OS X and is under /Applications/Automator) to visually create more complex script or actions to run.

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Got any example of how to do this? – slhck♦ Apr 17 '12 at 7:37

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