Cron Cheatsheet
A cron cheatsheet: manage your crontab, read the five fields, and copy common schedules — each links into the Cron Generator and Converter so you can tweak the schedule or move it between time zones with correct DST handling.
Explain a command
Manage your crontab
- List the current crontab
crontab -l - Edit the crontab
crontab -e - List another user’s crontab
sudo crontab -l -u - Remove the crontabdestructive
crontab -rDeletes the whole crontab with no confirmation. Back it up first with crontab -l.
- Install a crontab from a file
crontab
The five fields
- Field order
# min hour day-of-month month day-of-week command commandminute hour day-of-month month day-of-week — then the command.
- Operators: * , - /
*/15 9-17 * * 1-5* = every · , = list (1,15) · - = range (9-17) · / = step (*/15). This one: every 15 min, 9am–5pm, Mon–Fri.
Common schedules
- Every minute
* * * * * - Every N minutes
*/ * * * *n= minute stepBuild interactively → - Every hour at minute M
* * * * - Every day at HH:MM
* * * - Weekdays at 09:00
0 9 * * 1-5 - Weekly on a weekday
0 8 * *dow= 0=Sun … 6=SatBuild interactively → - Monthly on day D
0 0 * *d= day of monthBuild interactively →
Macros & special
- @daily (midnight)
@daily - @hourly
@hourly - @reboot (run once at startup)
@rebootRuns when cron starts after boot. In systemd, this maps to OnBootSec=.
- Pin a time zone with CRON_TZ
CRON_TZ= 0 9 * * 1-5Cron uses the machine’s local clock; CRON_TZ makes a job fire at a specific zone’s time across DST.
zone= IANA zoneConvert time zone →
18 commands. Copy-ready with editable placeholders — everything runs in your browser, nothing is sent to a server.