can we have cron schedule inside on:push block in github actions?

Question

something like this :

i want to trigger it only on Saturday if any Push happens on Master branch

 on:
      push:
        branches:
          - 'master'
        schedule:
          - cron: '0 0 * * SAT'

Answer 1

on:push currently only receives path, branch and tag (include corresponding -ignore version).

See Workflow syntax for GitHub Actions

There are other alternative (but not perfect) approaches:

1. Add a step to perform datetime calculation (use bash or other tools), and use if: condition the following steps.

   on:
     push:
       branches: [master]
   
   name: some-name
   jobs:
     example:
       name: Example
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - name: Calculate date
           id: date
           run: |
             echo "cond=$($(date +'%w') - 6)" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
         - name: Other steps
           if: fromJSON(steps.date.outputs.cond) == 0
           # Do something else
           # ...
   

   However, such calculation could be hard to implement when the cron expression is too complex.

2. Create a new workflow and use the cron trigger to periodically enable-disable workflow using GitHub cli. But notice that GitHub Actions do have random time delay (~several minutes) for cron triggers. See Disabling and enabling a workflow for more info.