Guides

Scheduled jobs on macOS, one problem per page. Terminal fix first, CronMon at the end.

• crontab is not running on macOS

  Five checks in the order that finds it fastest: is the line installed, is cron running at all, is the command on cron's short PATH, does the job need Full Disk Access, and what did it print into the mailbox nobody reads.

• cron: Operation not permitted on macOS

  A job that touches Desktop, Documents, Downloads or an external volume fails until /usr/sbin/cron has Full Disk Access. The six steps, why macOS does it, how to prove it worked, and the five reasons it still fails.

• launchd StartCalendarInterval examples

  Working property lists for daily, weekday, weekly and several-times-a-day schedules, the wildcard rule that catches everybody, StartInterval, and the launchctl commands to load a job and read back its run count.

• cron vs launchd on macOS

  Side by side on syntax, missed runs while the Mac slept, environment, where the output goes, and what history you can read back afterwards — plus which one to reach for.

• Run a script every day on a Mac

  The one-line crontab entry, the launchd agent that also runs after the Mac wakes, a table of common schedules, and the four things that stop either of them working.

• Where does cron output go on a Mac?

  Into /var/mail/<user>, a plain text file nothing on macOS opens. How to read it, what MAILTO does and does not do, how to redirect to a log instead, and why the unified log has nothing.

• crontab -e opens vim on macOS

  How to get out of vi, how to make VISUAL and EDITOR point at nano or VS Code, the --wait flag graphical editors need, and how to keep your crontab in a file you can put in a repository.

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