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Cron Describer

Explain a 5-field cron expression in plain English.

Free to use, no sign-up required. Cron Describer is one of 198 tools built into Xenition, alongside a chat that can use them for you.

Turns a five-field cron expression into a plain-English sentence, so you can check a crontab line or scheduled job before relying on it.

How to use Cron Describer

  1. Fill in the five boxes: min, hour, day, month and weekday. An empty box counts as *.
  2. Or tap one of the examples, such as 0 9 * * 1-5, to load it.
  3. Read the full expression under the boxes and the description below it.

How it works

Each field accepts *, */n, a single number, a range a-b, a stepped range a-b/n, a start with a step a/n (5/15 means 5, 20, 35 and 50), and comma lists of these. Allowed values are minute 0–59, hour 0–23, day 1–31, month 1–12 or JAN–DEC, and weekday 0–7 or SUN–SAT, where 0 and 7 both mean Sunday; names work in any case. When both day of month and weekday are restricted, the description joins them with “or”, as standard cron does.

Example

0 9 * * 1-5 reads “Runs at 09:00, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.” 30 2 1,15 * * reads “Runs at 02:30, on day 1 and 15 of the month.”

Questions about Cron Describer

What does 0 0 1 * 1 mean?

Midnight on the 1st of every month and also every Monday. When both the day and weekday fields are set, cron runs the job if either one matches, not only when both do.

What time zone does a cron schedule use?

Whatever time zone the machine or service running it is set to, often UTC on servers. The expression itself carries no time zone.

Use it from chat

You do not have to open Cron Describer to use it. Ask Xenition in plain language and it runs the right tool, then carries the answer into whatever you are working on — a document, a spreadsheet, a deck.

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