Magento needs cron for almost everything that happens in the background: order emails, indexers, sitemaps, currency rates and cache cleaning. On Gen2 it is installed for every Magento application, running as the application's own user every minute.
Check that cron runs
- Logs tab, Cron: recent runs of the application's cron.
- In the admin: System, Index Management shows when each indexer last ran.
- Over SSH:
bin/magento cron:runruns it once by hand; Actions, Run cron now does the same from the console.
Indexers
| Mode | Use |
|---|---|
| Update by schedule | Recommended for live stores: changes are indexed by cron in small batches. |
| Update on save | Each save rebuilds the index at once; slow admin and heavy load on large catalogues. |
bin/magento indexer:set-mode schedule
bin/magento indexer:statusA full reindex is rarely needed. Use Actions, Reindex after a large import or when an index shows Reindex required.
Stuck jobs
If many jobs pile up in cron_schedule with status running for hours, a job crashed. Open a ticket: we look at which job and clear the queue safely.
Did this solve it? If not, tell us what you see and we look at your server.
Open a ticket