GitHub Actions scheduled workflow not triggering at all

[dharangutti]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

ARC (Actions Runner Controller)

Discussion Details

I have a GitHub Actions workflow with both workflow_dispatch and schedule.

Manual runs work correctly, but scheduled runs never appear in Actions history.

Workflow file:
.github/workflows/report-scheduler.yml

Default branch:
main

Current schedule for testing:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "*/10 * * * *"

  workflow_dispatch:

Repository Actions are enabled and other workflows are running normally.

The workflow is visible in the Actions sidebar and manual dispatch works, but no schedule events appear even after 15–20 minutes.

Am I missing any known GitHub Actions scheduler requirement or limitation?

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[fiftydinar]

Same issue here:

https://github.com/fiftydinar/xfce-aerolike/blob/main/.github/workflows/build-packages.yml

[vincere-mori]

A few scheduler rules are easy to miss:

• schedule only runs from the workflow file on the default branch.
• Cron times are UTC.
• GitHub does not guarantee exact timing; runs can be delayed, especially around busy minute marks like 0, 10, 20, etc.
• Scheduled workflows can be disabled after long repository inactivity.
• schedule has a minimum practical interval of 5 minutes, but using it for testing at */10 can still take longer than 15-20 minutes to show up.

For testing, I would use an odd minute pattern to avoid peak scheduler load:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '7/10 * * * *'
  workflow_dispatch:

Then verify these two things first:

1. .github/workflows/report-scheduler.yml is committed on main, not only on another branch.
2. The workflow is enabled in the Actions tab. If it was disabled, manual workflow_dispatch can still mislead you into thinking the scheduler is active.

ARC is unrelated here. ARC affects where jobs run after GitHub creates a workflow run; it does not decide whether the schedule event is emitted.