Cronical (Windows crond)

.NET-based cron daemon (crond). Can replace Windows Services and Scheduled Tasks, typically for running service-like processes as part of an application suite - or just by itself.


What is it?

Cronical is a replacement and improvement over the Windows' Scheduled Tasks. It is a reimplementation of the UNIX crond process, which schedules jobs (programs, shell commands) to be run at certain intervals. It's quiet, light-weight, effective, and very reliable.

It targets the .NET framework v4.7.2, but has otherwise no dependencies.


  1. Download the binaries above and unpack.
  2. Copy the three files in the Binaries folder to a suitable location on disk.
  3. Open an administration command prompt and run the following command:
    cronical --install
  4. Cronical is now registered as a Windows Service. Simply start it as a service, and it will parse the information in the cron.dat file and make sure everything is running smoothly.


Is it free?

Cronical is released under an open source Apache 2.0 license, and as such is free to use and deploy.


Written by Mats Gefvert. Please use the GitHub repository to file issues or questions.