As of Mac OS 10.4 crontab has been depreciated but not ended. So its a good idea to know how to use its replacement under Mac OS. Welcome to Launchd.
This will be a short guide on how to use launchd in a simple form to replace a crontab job. In my case I am automating the backup of my Plex server. You can see my previous article here
Launchd has a lot of other features. I will not look at them here.
You can checkout these other resources:
- launchd.info
- The offical Apple page.
- command line:
man launchd.plist
A basic example of a plist file for launchd. In this case we will use plexback.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>my.example.backupplex</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/caffeinate</string>
<string>/User/ACCOUNT/bin/plexbackup.sh</string>
</array>
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>6</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>Weekday</key>
<integer>0</integer>
</dict>
</dict>
</plist>
Note:
Replace ACCOUNT with your login username.
You will need to create this file under your ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
If your system is always running and never shuts down. You will need to issue the command:launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/plexback.plist
This will register your task with the scheduler that is used with launchd.