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How to set up automatic schedules and scheduled commands in the panel

September 11, 2026
Minecraft

1. What Schedules are

Schedules let you automate actions on your server, such as restarting, sending commands or creating backups at set times — without having to do it manually every day.

2. Opening the Schedules tab

In your panel, select your server and, in the left sidebar under Configuration, click Schedules.

Sidebar showing the Schedules tab under Configuration

3. Creating a new schedule

You'll see the server's list of schedules — empty if you haven't created any yet. Click Create schedule:

Empty Manage schedules screen with the Create schedule button
  • Give it a name to identify it (e.g. Daily restart).
  • Set the frequency using the minute, hour, day of month, month and day of week fields (a cron-like format).
Edit schedule screen with Advanced mode on, showing the example values (0, 6, *, *, *) filled in

Example: to run every day at 06:00, use:

  Minute: 0 | Hour: 6 | Day of month: * | Month: * | Day of week: *
ℹ️ Tip: Check Only When Server Is Online if the task should only run when the server is already running (e.g. sending a command). If you'd rather write the frequency in cron syntax, turn on the Advanced toggle in the top right corner of the screen.

Once created, the schedule shows up in the list with the Active status. Click Manage schedule to set up the tasks it will run:

Newly created schedule in the list, with the Manage schedule button

4. Adding tasks to the schedule

Inside the schedule, click New Task:

Schedule detail screen with the New Task button

In the Action field, choose the type of task:

  • Send command: runs a command in the console, such as an announcement or /save-all.
  • Send power action: starts, restarts, stops or kills the server.
  • Create backup.

Send command:

Create Task screen with the Send command action selected

Send power action — choose between Start, Restart, Stop or Kill:

Create Task screen with the Send power action and the options menu open

Create backup — creates a backup automatically. You can list files to ignore (by default it uses .pteroignore) and enable Continue on Failure if you want the following tasks to run even if this one fails:

Create Task screen with the Create backup action selected

Also set a time offset (in seconds) between tasks if you need to chain several actions.

5. Practical example: announcement + automatic restart

A common flow is warning players before restarting:

  1. Task 1 — Send command: say The server will restart in 5 minutes!
  2. Task 2 — Send command (wait 240s): say Restarting in 1 minute!
  3. Task 3 — Restart server (wait 60s).

6. Enabling and disabling a schedule

Each schedule has an enable/disable toggle in the list. You can pause a schedule without deleting it.

ℹ️ This feature works the same way for Minecraft servers, bots and other services in the panel — the available tasks vary by server type.

7. Tips

  • Combine automatic backups (see the article on backups) with a daily schedule outside peak hours.
  • Use schedules to restart the server periodically and avoid memory leaks in very long sessions.