Cron Explainer
Explain cron in plain English
Cron Explainer: Explain cron in plain English. A free, browser-based tool from DevToolbox that runs entirely on your own device: no upload, no account, no tracking.
About the Cron Explainer
Paste a cron expression and read back what it actually means in plain English, field by field, before it goes into a scheduler where a mistake runs at three in the morning.
The calculation is done with the same maths a browser or design tool uses internally, so the values match what you will see when you paste them into CSS, a terminal or an editor.
What you can do with it
- Cron expression parser
- Explain cron
- Cron to english
- Cron schedule reader
How to use it
- Enter your value in the input.
- The equivalent forms are calculated immediately.
- Adjust any options to change the output format.
- Copy the value you want.
Questions
- Which cron syntax is this?
- Standard five-field cron: minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week. Extensions vary between implementations: a leading seconds field, @reboot style shorthands and Quartz-specific characters are not part of the standard five.
- What happens when both day fields are set?
- In classic cron they are OR-ed, not AND-ed: the job runs if either the day of month or the day of week matches. It surprises almost everyone the first time.
- Is my data uploaded anywhere?
- No. The tool is JavaScript that runs in the tab you already have open, and DevToolbox has no backend to send anything to. You can open the network tab and watch: after the page and its script load, nothing is sent while you work.
Related tools
The Cron Explainer sits in Utilities, one of the 90 tools on DevToolbox.