Scheduled tasks on uniz.host — automatic restarts, commands and power

A long-running server usually wants to restart itself overnight, warn players first, or shut down after midnight and come back in the evening. The scheduled tasks in the Settings tab do all of that — but you only get the result you meant once you understand which rounds actually run.

Where the task list is, and who can use it

Open the server page, choose the "Settings" tab, then the "Sleep, wake and schedule" group. The list is the group's second section, after auto-sleep: on a Minecraft server it is headed "Scheduled tasks", on Palworld and Core Keeper "Automatic schedule". With nothing configured it reads "No scheduled tasks yet."

The list renders only for the server owner and for team members granted the settings permission. Anyone else does not see it at all rather than seeing it disabled.

Creating your first task

Open the Sleep, wake and schedule group and press add task

"Add task" creates a task that is already enabled and pre-set to restart the server daily at 04:00 — which is what most people want anyway. If that is all you need, press save.

You get up to 5 tasks per server. Once full, the add button is disabled.

Choose the action you want

The "Action" field offers four, and each has its own condition for when it may run — the table in the next section is the heart of this guide.

• Restart the server — shut down cleanly and come back; clears accumulated memory and restores smoothness on a long-running server
• Run a console command — send one command into the game; a command field appears, up to 200 characters
• Stop the server — halt it, which also ends the charge
• Start the server — bring a stopped server up, which begins the charge

Choose the schedule and set the time

The "When" field has two modes.

Every day at — pick an hour from 00:00 to 23:00. The label reads "Time (Thailand time)" and means it literally: the hour is always Thailand time, whatever country you are in.

Every few hours — 4, 6, 12 or 24, counted from the last run rather than pinned to the clock.

Times are approximate. Due tasks are checked about once a minute, so a 04:00 job happens within that minute rather than on the exact second.

Press save tasks

Nothing takes effect until you press "Save tasks". That button sits at the foot of the list, separate from the group's save bar, and works on the whole list at once, so adding, editing and pressing the bin icon are screen-only changes until you save. Delete a task and reload without saving and it will be back.

The switch in front of each task's name exists to pause it without deleting it; a paused task reads "Turned off". Handy when you want automation out of the way during an event.

Which rounds actually run

Being due is not the same as being run. Every task is checked against the server's state at that moment.

The single most important thing here: a skipped round counts as spent. The platform records that round as done and waits for the next one. It is not held over.

In practice: if you set a daily restart at 04:00 and the server was asleep at 4am, that round is simply gone. When players arrive at 10am the server does not restart mid-session — which is the right outcome. A restart that turns up five hours late is a surprise disconnection for everyone online.

There is one exception. If the server is mid-transition or a backup is running, the task is re-checked on the next pass instead of counting as spent, because a momentary condition should not consume the day's round.

Auto-sleep changes what is worth scheduling

If auto-sleep is on, rethink the whole plan.

Restart tasks barely run at all on a server that sleeps regularly — and that is fine, because sleeping and waking already gives you what a restart gives you, a completely fresh process. The one difference is the bill: a sleep, like any stop you cause, ends the server's cap rounds, while a restart keeps them.

The task that pairs well with sleeping is "Start the server", set a little before a known session so the first player does not wait through a boot. Set it for sessions that are actually happening, though: a server started for nobody bills the same as one full of players.

If credits have run out, a start task fails and nothing is spent that you do not have. Top up and the next round runs on its own.

Which games can use a command task

The game has to accept commands from outside, which on this platform means Minecraft. Schedule a command on a game without that system — Palworld, for instance — and the round is counted as due and then fails, with nothing surfacing to tell you.

The most useful pattern is warning players before a restart: pair a command task announcing at 03:00 with a restart task at 04:00. The command field already carries an example.

Remember that a command task also needs the server online, so an announcement on a sleeping server is skipped exactly as the restart would be.

Reading the lines under a task

Each task can show up to two short lines underneath it, and they are how the screen tells you what your schedule is doing.

"Next run", followed by a date and time, says when the task comes due next. Once that time has arrived but the sweep has not picked it up yet, it says the task is due now and runs within a minute. Two tasks showing the same next run are about to collide. A paused task has no such line.

"Last period" says what actually happened last time, in one of three ways — "ran", "skipped" or "failed" — followed by the reason when the platform knows it, such as "Last period: skipped — the server was not online" for a 4am restart on a sleeping server, or "failed" for a command task on a game with no console system. That line is the first place to look when you wonder why a task did not do anything.

To see a restart's effect another way, look for its "Restart" marker, followed by the time, on the charts on the Overview tab, or the boot lines in the console.

A newly created task that has not come due yet shows no "Last period" line. That is normal and does not mean it failed to save.

The "Next run" time is shown in your own device's local time, unlike the schedule field, which is Thailand time. Abroad the two will look inconsistent while both being right.

Read next

• Auto-sleep — stops billing whenever nobody is playing; whether that costs less than a scheduled stop depends on how much of the day the server would run, since every sleep ends the bill just as a stop does
• Dashboard tour — the other tabs on the server page
• Restore a backup — backup scheduling lives elsewhere, with separate rules
• Credits and billing — what happens when a start task fires