See all active cron jobs

[maggiechew]

⭐ Suggestion

I have been looking around and haven't found anything similar to what I'm looking for. Is there any way I can, preferably from the command line, see how many cron jobs are currently pending/ running? I'd like to get a sense of how many resources it's using up, how many are scheduled for the future, etc. If there is already something that does this, I would appreciate the guidance! Thank you

💻 Use Cases

Scheduling multiple jobs based on given number based on external app; how to check how many are scheduled/ running?
Sense of resources used

❌ Related Problems

No response

[sheerlox]

Hi there, thank you for your suggestion!

Unfortunately, we do not provide that feature at the moment. cron focuses on the scheduling part, and for use cases like yours, the managing/oversight part has to be developed on your side.

I'm not sure if this is a feature we'd like to add, but in the meantime, you can either create a small job manager in your code or maybe look for that feature in other libraries, such as bull.

Hope that helps!

[shengshengyi]

Great question! node-cron itself doesn't expose a built-in CLI or API to list active jobs - it manages them internally in memory.

A few workarounds depending on your needs:

1. Track jobs yourself: Maintain a Map of job names → cron instances when you create them:

const jobs = new Map();
jobs.set('cleanup', cron.schedule('0 0 * * *', cleanupFn));
// Then you can check jobs.size, iterate, etc.

2. Add metadata: Store scheduling info alongside the job:

const job = cron.schedule('*/5 * * * *', handler);
job.meta = { name: 'health-check', created: Date.now() };

3. External monitoring: If you need production-grade visibility (metrics, failure alerts, resource tracking), you might want a dedicated monitoring layer.

We're actually building something in this space - a Slack-native cron monitoring service that tracks job health without code changes. Currently running a 48-hour validation sprint to gauge interest. If you're open to it, I'd love to get your thoughts on what monitoring features would be most valuable for your use case.

Happy to share details if helpful!