Launchify

Launchify is a tool that makes it super easy to schedule programs to run on a regular schedule on macOS. As an example, to schedule a program myprog to run ever 5 minutes:

$ launchify 5m myprog

Under the hood, launchify registers your program to run using launchd. It writes a boilerplate config file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents and sets it up to write logs to ~/logs/myprog.

Install

Install requires the rust toolchain, which may be installed like:

$ curl https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh

Then install using cargo:

$ cargo install launchify

Advanced Usage

To see full CLI options, run launchify -h.

You can specify the period to run the program over as (d)ays, (h)ours, (m)inutes or (s)econds. For example, to run myprog once an hour:

$ launchify 1h myprog

Extra program args may be specified via the --args option

$ launchify 5m myprog --args="--foo bar"

You may override the default name used to label the launchify job and log directory via --name. By default the name is derived from the program filename.

$ launchify 5m myprog --name=my_awesome_program

Comparison to launchctl

launchify is not intended to replace launchctl but is a convenience tool to complement it. launchify purposely does not support the full configuration options which may be passed to launchctl but optimizes for a common use-case.

After scheduling a program using launchify, you will find the configuration file written to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.<name>.plist. To stop running the program, run:

$ launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.<name>.plist

For further information on launch agents and daemones on macOS, see https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/CreatingLaunchdJobs.html