It’s time to unleash those super utilities that lurk inside your Mac. One of them is the Unix Cron. It’s a time-based utility which lets you schedule specific functions on your Mac.
Once set up with Cron, the functions follow a specific schedule that you create. Cron in your Mac is a pain to learn and fraught with problems. Cronette is a magical Cron tool which makes the complex much, much easier to use.
Powerful Task Launching Made Easy
Cron itself is powerful. It’s just not easy to use. Cronette is a nifty Mac app that acts as your interface to Cron. It makes setting up and scheduling Cron tasks a mere point and click exercise.
Think of Cronette as a task launcher app for the Mac.
Cron is built in to all Macs running OS X, from the lowly Mac mini, to the MacBook and iMac, or even Mac Pro or Xserve servers. Cronette handles the basic Cron launch tasks of Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly.
Cronette’s setup may appear daunting (many options), but is straightforward.
Cronette can launch apps and launch documents. Simply click the Plus + button, name the action, set the time of the action, and select the function.
Cron tasks can be viewed and edited.
Tasks that have been executed already are listed in the log, which can be viewed by clicking the Result Schedule.
Cron is a staple of Unix and Linux systems. Mac OS X users would normally be required to use the command line interface in Terminal, a decidedly unfriendly way to set up a scheduled task.
Cronette lets you set tasks to run daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly.
Daily tasks can be set up to run 10 different times during the day.
What good is it? Cron tasks are automatic. They just run. You can set up tasks from launching an app, to running a specific script.
Cronette also lets you restart or shut down or sleep according to a schedule. Even complex Unix commands can be scheduled to run in Cronette.
Alas, unlike cron and the Terminal, both built in to your Mac, Cronette is not free. That’s the price between learning command line functions and point and click.
