Schedule Conditions

Conditions can be added to an action's schedule that may prevent it from running, delay the start of the action, or automatically stop the action after it has started.

Adding conditions to a schedule Steps

While editing an action:

schedule condition

Click the + button and choose the condition you want to add
Customize the condition, as needed
Click a – button to remove a condition

Condition Types

There are three kinds of conditions:

Ignore … conditions will skip (not run) the action if the condition is true.
Hold … conditions block the action from starting for as long as the condition is true; the action starts running as soon as the condition is no longer true.
Stop … conditions stops a running action (equivalent to clicking the stop button) once the condition becomes true.

When Stop… means Ignore… Note

If a Stop … condition is true a the moment the action is about to run, it acts like an Ignore … condition and prevents the action from starting in the first place.

Conditions

Ignore between: skips the action if scheduled to start between two local times.
Ignore if no archive / Hold if no archive: skips or holds the action whenever the archive is not available.
Ignore if no capture Items / Hold if no capture items: skips or holds the action as long as none of the capture items are available.
Ignore if free space: skips the action of the free space on the archive's volume is less/more than some amount, which can be an absolute size or a percentage of the volume's size.
Ignore if archive size: skips the action whenever the size of the archive is less/more than a given size.
Ignore if user logged / Hold if user logged / Stop if user logged: skips, holds, or stops the action when the user is logged in or out
Ignore if power / Hold while power / Stop if power: skips, holds, or stops the action whenever the system is, or is not, running on battery power, or the estimated battery/UPS reserve is below some threshold.
Ignore if shutdown: skips the action if it was originally scheduled run before the system was last booted up.
Ignore if application / Hold while application / Stop if application: skips, holds, or stops the action if a specific application is, or is not, running.
Stop after: stops the action once it has been running for the given duration.
Stop at: stops the action at a particular time, regardless of when the action was started.

In these conditions, the term available means "immediately reachable in the filesystem without mounting a volume or connecting to a server."

Multiple conditions More Info

You can add any combination of conditions you desire, although some conditions are mutually exclusive; to add a new condition you may need to first remove a conflicting condition.

Some conditions can only be used with certain actions.

The order of conditions is unimportant; conditions are evaluated simultaneously.

If Power conditions Details

Power conditions for laptops refer to the battery charge and external supply source as reported by macOS.

Desktop computers (without UPS) are always treated as if they are running on external power. For those systems, the External Source condition is perpetually true and all other power conditions are false.

For a UPS system to be recognized as a battery power source for a desktop system, it must communicate its status to the system; this is usually accomplished via a USB connection and a driver compatible with macOS's power management service. Otherwise, it will be treated as a desktop system connected to an inexhaustable power source.

Examples

Here are some example conditions and how they could be used:

Hold While No Archive – Action will wait until its archive is available. Useful for removable backup volumes. The action will wait until the volume containing the archive is mounted. Use this condition on actions that need to wait for an external backup drive to be plugged in.

Ignore if Shutdown – Skips an action if the system was shutdown when it was last scheduled to run. Allows you to schedule actions to run at regular intervals, but avoids running them as soon as you start up because one of those periods occurred while the system was shut down.

Ignore if Free Space More than 20% – Skips this action if the free space on the volume is more than 20%. Useful for Compact and Merge actions; avoids compacting or merging layers if there is still ample free space on the drive.

Ignore if Parallels Desktop is Open – Skips the action if the application Parallels Desktop is running. This can be used to avoid capturing VM files while they are being modified; it's nearly impossible capture a valid copy of a VM disk image while it is in use.

Stop After 5 Hours – Stops a running action once it has been running for 5 hours. Useful for keeping long running actions, like capture or compact, from interfering with the normal use of the computer. A compact action started at 2:00 will be stopped if it hasn't finished by 7:00.

Stop If Power Remaining Less than 20% – Stop an action if the available battery power remaining is estimated to be less than 20%.

Ignore If Power from Battery or UPS – Keep long running maintenance actions (like compact and verify) from starting when the system is running on battery power.