Message “Async callback was not invoked within the 5000 ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout”

Question

I'm using Puppeteer and Jest to run some front end tests.

My tests look as follows:

describe("Profile Tab Exists and Clickable: /settings/user", () => {
    test(`Assert that you can click the profile tab`, async () => {
      await page.waitForSelector(PROFILE.TAB);
      await page.click(PROFILE.TAB);
    }, 30000);
});

Sometimes, when I run the tests, everything works as expectedly. Other times, I get an error:

Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within the 5000 ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout.

     at node_modules/jest-jasmine2/build/queue_runner.js:68:21 <br/>
     at Timeout.callback [as _onTimeout] (node_modules/jsdom/lib/jsdom/browser/Window.js:633:19)

This is strange because:

1. I specified the timeout to be 30000

2. Whether or not I get this error is seemingly very random

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

The timeout you specify here needs to be shorter than the default timeout.

The default timeout is 5000 and the framework by default is jasmine in case of jest. You can specify the timeout inside the test by adding

jest.setTimeout(30000);

But this would be specific to the test. Or you can set up the configuration file for the framework.

Configuring Jest

// jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  // setupTestFrameworkScriptFile has been deprecated in
  // favor of setupFilesAfterEnv in jest 24
  setupFilesAfterEnv: ['./jest.setup.js']
}

// jest.setup.js
jest.setTimeout(30000)

See also these threads:

setTimeout per test #5055

Make jasmine.DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_INTERVAL configurable #652

P.S.: The misspelling setupFilesAfterEnv (i.e. setupFileAfterEnv) will also throw the same error.

Answer 2

It should call the async/await when it is async from test.

describe("Profile Tab Exists and Clickable: /settings/user", () => {
    test(`Assert that you can click the profile tab`, async (done) => {
        await page.waitForSelector(PROFILE.TAB);
        await page.click(PROFILE.TAB);
        done();
    }, 30000);
});

Answer 3

The answer to this question has changed as Jest has evolved. Current answer (March 2019):

1. You can override the timeout of any individual test by adding a third parameter to the it. I.e., it('runs slow', () => {...}, 9999)

2. You can change the default using jest.setTimeout. To do this:

   // Configuration
   "setupFilesAfterEnv": [  // NOT setupFiles
       "./src/jest/defaultTimeout.js"
   ],
   

   and

   // File: src/jest/defaultTimeout.js
   /* Global jest */
   jest.setTimeout(1000)
   

3. Like others have noted, and not directly related to this, done is not necessary with the async/await approach.

Answer 4

This is a relatively new update, but it is much more straight forward. If you are using Jest 24.9.0 or higher you can just add testTimeout to your config:

// in jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  testTimeout: 30000
}

Answer 5

I would like to add (this is a bit long for a comment) that even with a timeout of 3000 my tests would still sometimes (randomly) fail with

Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within the 5000ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout.

Thanks to Tarun's great answer, I think the shortest way to fix a lot of tests is:

describe('Puppeteer tests', () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    jest.setTimeout(10000);
  });

  test('Best Jest test fest', async () => {
    // Blah
  });
});

Answer 6

Make sure to invoke done(); on callbacks or it simply won't pass the test.

beforeAll((done /* Call it or remove it */ ) => {
  done(); // Calling it
});

It applies to all other functions that have a done() callback.

Answer 7

For Jest 24.9+, you can also set the timeout from the command line by adding --testTimeout.

Here's an excerpt from its documentation:

--testTimeout=<number>
Default timeout of a test in milliseconds. Default value: 5000.

Answer 8

For Jest 24.9+, we just need to add --testTimeout on the command line:

--testTimeout= 10000 // Timeout of 10 seconds

The default timeout value is 5000 (5000 ms - 5 seconds). This will be applicable for all test cases.

Or if you want to give timeout to particular function only then you can use this syntax while declaring the test case.

test(name, fn, timeout)

Example

test('example', async () => {

}, 10000); // Timeout of 10 seconds (default is 5000 ms)

Answer 9

Yet another solution: set the timeout in the Jest configuration file, e.g.:

{ // ... other stuff here
    "testTimeout": 90000
}

Answer 10

You can also get timeout errors based on silly typos. For example, this seemingly innocuous mistake:

describe('Something', () => {
  it('Should do something', () => {
    expect(1).toEqual(1)
  })

  it('Should do nothing', something_that_does_not_exist => {
    expect(1).toEqual(1)
  })
})

Produces the following error:

FAIL src/TestNothing.spec.js (5.427s)
  ● Something › Should do nothing

    Timeout - Async callback was not invoked within the 5000ms timeout specified by jest.setTimeout.
      
      at node_modules/jest-jasmine2/build/queue_runner.js:68:21
      at Timeout.callback [as _onTimeout] (node_modules/jsdom/lib/jsdom/browser/Window.js:678:19)

While the code sample posted doesn't suffer from this, it might be a cause of failures elsewhere. Also note that I'm not setting a timeout for anything anywhere - either here or in the configuration. The 5000 ms is just the default setting.

Answer 11

I recently ran into this issue for a different reason: I was running some tests synchronously using jest -i, and it would just timeout. For whatever reasoning, running the same tests using jest --runInBand (even though -i is meant to be an alias) doesn't time out.

Answer 12

// In jest.setup.js
jest.setTimeout(30000)

If on Jest <= 23:

// In jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  setupTestFrameworkScriptFile: './jest.setup.js'
}

If on Jest > 23:

// In jest.config.js
module.exports = {
  setupFilesAfterEnv: ['./jest.setup.js']
}

Answer 13

In case someone doesn't fix the problem use methods above. I fixed mine by surrounding the async func by an arrow function. As in:

describe("Profile Tab Exists and Clickable: /settings/user", () => {
    test(`Assert that you can click the profile tab`, (() => {
      async () => {
        await page.waitForSelector(PROFILE.TAB)
        await page.click(PROFILE.TAB)
      }
    })(), 30000);
});

Answer 14

The timeout problem occurs when either the network is slow or many network calls are made using await. These scenarios exceed the default timeout, i.e., 5000 ms. To avoid the timeout error, simply increase the timeout of globals that support a timeout. A list of globals and their signature can be found here.

For Jest 24.9

Answer 15

For those who are looking for an explanation about jest --runInBand, you can go to the documentation.

Running Puppeteer in CI environments

GitHub - smooth-code/jest-puppeteer: Run your tests using Jest & Puppeteer

Answer 16

In my case, this error started appearing randomly and wouldn't go away even after setting a timeout of 30000. Simply ending the process in the terminal and rerunning the tests resolved the issue for me. I have also removed the timeout and tests are still passing again.