Cron Describe

Hover over a cron expression in any file to see what it means in plain English, and edit it with a picker instead of counting asterisks.

Features

Describe on hover

Hover over a cron expression in any language: JavaScript, Python, YAML, crontab files, and more.

Supports 5-field expressions, 6 fields with seconds, 7 fields with a year, day and month names, and the @yearly / @monthly / @weekly / @daily / @hourly shortcuts.

Invalid expressions are flagged

Expressions that look like cron but can't run show why:

Cron: ⚠️ Invalid — minutes part must be >= 0 and <= 59

Edit with a picker

Click ✏️ Edit in the hover (or run Cron: Edit Cron Expression with the cursor on an expression) to open the editor beside your file. Choose how often it runs, then the time, weekdays, day of the month or month. A live preview shows the expression and its description, and Apply writes it back into your file.

Anything the picker can't represent (lists of hours, L, #, and so on) opens as a custom expression you can type directly, still with the live description.

Settings

Credits

Descriptions are generated by cronstrue.