Laravel continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and version 12.40 is a testament to its commitment to developer experience and operational control. This release introduces two powerful features—Queue Pausing/Resuming and the daysOfMonth() scheduler method—that make background job management and task scheduling more flexible, safer, and easier to maintain.
If you’re running production workloads or managing complex schedules, these features will feel like a breath of fresh air.
🔧 Feature 1: Queue Pausing & Resuming
Queues are the backbone of modern Laravel applications. They handle everything from sending emails and processing payments to dispatching notifications and running background jobs. Traditionally, if you needed to stop queues during deployments or maintenance, you had to kill the worker processes—a blunt instrument that often led to downtime or lost jobs.
Laravel 12.40 changes that with queue pausing.
How It Works
You can now pause and resume queues directly from the Artisan CLI:
php artisan queue:pause
php artisan queue:resume- Pause: Jobs remain in the queue but are not processed.
- Resume: Workers immediately continue processing from where they left off.
Why It Matters
- Safe Deployments: Pause queues during database migrations to prevent race conditions or inconsistent states.
- Controlled Downtime: Temporarily halt jobs during maintenance windows without losing queued tasks.
- Operational Flexibility: Resume instantly without restarting workers, reducing downtime and complexity.
For teams running high‑traffic Laravel apps, this feature is a game‑changer. It allows you to manage background jobs with surgical precision rather than brute force.
📅 Feature 2: daysOfMonth() Scheduler
Laravel’s scheduler has always been one of its most expressive features. Developers love methods like daily(), weeklyOn(), and monthlyOn() because they abstract away messy cron expressions. With daysOfMonth(), Laravel 12.40 takes scheduling to the next level.
Example Usage
$schedule->command('reports:generate')
->daysOfMonth([1, 15, 30])
->at('09:00');This command will run on the 1st, 15th, and 30th of every month at 9 AM.
Why It Matters
- Billing Cycles: Run invoices on the 1st and 15th of each month.
- Reporting: Generate monthly or mid‑month analytics without complex cron syntax.
- Custom Workflows: Perfect for apps with irregular schedules, like payroll or subscription renewals.
No more cryptic cron strings—Laravel makes it readable, maintainable, and developer‑friendly.
🛠️ Other Enhancements in 12.40
While queue pausing and daysOfMonth() are the headline features, Laravel 12.40 also includes smaller improvements that enhance developer ergonomics:
- Time Interval Helpers: New functions like
minutes(5)ordays(30)returnCarbonIntervalinstances, making time calculations cleaner and more expressive. - Improved Scheduling APIs: More intuitive methods for defining complex schedules, reducing reliance on raw cron expressions.
- Minor Bug Fixes & Performance Tweaks: As always, the Laravel team continues to polish the framework for stability and speed.
🧪 Real‑World Scenarios
Let’s look at how these features play out in real applications:
- E‑Commerce Platform: Pause queues during a major database migration to ensure no orders are processed in an inconsistent state. Resume once the migration is complete.
- SaaS Billing System: Use
daysOfMonth([1, 15])to run billing jobs twice a month, aligning perfectly with subscription cycles. - Analytics Dashboard: Schedule heavy reporting tasks on the 30th of each month at midnight, ensuring fresh data for monthly reviews.
🚀 Final Thoughts
Laravel 12.40 is all about operational control and developer happiness.
- Queue pausing gives teams safer deployments and smoother maintenance workflows.
daysOfMonth()makes scheduling more intuitive and expressive.
Together, these features reduce friction in managing background jobs and scheduled tasks, keeping your Laravel apps both robust and developer‑friendly.