# Email Alert When WP-Cron Stops Running

> Warns the admin by email when scheduled tasks are more than an hour overdue, so you notice before scheduled posts, digests and backups silently stop.

- Type: PHP
- Runs: Run everywhere
- Category: [Email](https://wpide.com/library/category/email/)
- Tags: email, cron, monitoring
- Author: WPIDE Team
- Installs: 0
- Updated: 2026-10-28
- Page: https://wpide.com/library/email-alert-cron-stalled/

## Code

```php
$wpide_cron_late_minutes = 60;

add_action( 'admin_init', function () use ( $wpide_cron_late_minutes ) {
    if ( wp_doing_ajax() || ! current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) || get_transient( 'wpide_cron_checked' ) ) {
        return;
    }
    set_transient( 'wpide_cron_checked', 1, HOUR_IN_SECONDS );

    $crons = _get_cron_array();
    if ( ! is_array( $crons ) || ! $crons ) {
        return;
    }

    $oldest = (int) min( array_keys( $crons ) );
    $late   = time() - $oldest;

    if ( $late < $wpide_cron_late_minutes * MINUTE_IN_SECONDS || get_transient( 'wpide_cron_alert_sent' ) ) {
        return;
    }

    set_transient( 'wpide_cron_alert_sent', 1, DAY_IN_SECONDS );
    $hooks = array_keys( (array) $crons[ $oldest ] );

    wp_mail(
        get_option( 'admin_email' ),
        sprintf( '[%s] Scheduled tasks are not running', wp_specialchars_decode( get_bloginfo( 'name' ), ENT_QUOTES ) ),
        sprintf( "The oldest scheduled task (%s) is %s overdue, which means WP-Cron is not running.\n\nCheck that DISABLE_WP_CRON is not set without a real server cron job, and that your site can make requests to itself.", implode( ', ', $hooks ), human_time_diff( $oldest ) )
    );
} );
```

## Notes

The check runs when an administrator loads the admin, so it works even when cron itself is broken; at most one alert per day.

## How to use it

Install the free WPIDE plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpide/), find "Email Alert When WP-Cron Stops Running" in its snippet library and add it in one click; or create a new PHP snippet in WPIDE (or any code snippets plugin) and paste the code above. More snippets: https://wpide.com/library/