Handle the idle timeout error

Learn about possible solutions to resolve the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error in this section.

Issue

When you run a test using BrowserStack App Automate, the following error might appear in the Text Logs section of your App Automate session page:

[BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT] Session timed out due to inactivity for configured time interval (default: 90 secs)

Cause

Some common causes for the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error to occur are as follows:

• The driver.quit command is not added in the test script.
• The test script has encountered some exceptions due to which it failed to run the driver.quit command.
• The test script paused the test execution for more than 90 seconds.

Resolution/Workaround

Try the following resolutions to resolve the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error:

• Add the driver.quit command in test script
• Increase the default timeout duration
• Handle exceptions in the test script

Add driver.quit command in test script

BrowserStack, by default, does not know when your test scripts have completed running. Add the following driver.quit command at the end of your test script to let BrowserStack know about the completion of all test commands.

driver.quit();

driver.quit();

driver.Quit();

$driver->quit();

driver.quit()

driver.quit

$driver->quit();

Increase timeout duration

BrowserStack generates a BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error if a session has not received any commands for more than the default timeout of 90 seconds.

You might get the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error even if the driver.quit command is added to the test script. This happens because a test command took more than 90 seconds to run. Thus, the test script fails to reach and run the driver.quit command, resulting in a timeout.

If you anticipate that a test command might take more than 90 seconds to run, you can increase the timeout using either the idleTimeout capability or Appium’s newCommandTimeout capability.

When using the idleTimeout capability, you can increase the timeout to a maximum of 300 seconds.

Use the following sample code snippets to set the idleTimeout capability in your test script:

DesiredCapabilities caps = new DesiredCapabilities();

// BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
caps.setCapability("browserstack.idleTimeout", "<time_in_seconds>");

// Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
caps.setCapability("newCommandTimeout", "<time_in_seconds>");

var capabilities = {
  // BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
  "browserstack.idleTimeout" : "<time_in_seconds>",

  // Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
  "newCommandTimeout", "<time_in_seconds>",
}

AppiumOptions capabilities = new AppiumOptions();

// BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
capabilities.AddAdditionalCapability("browserstack.idleTimeout", "<time_in_seconds>");

// Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
capabilities.AddAdditionalCapability("newCommandTimeout", "<time_in_seconds>");

$caps = array(
  # BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
  "browserstack.idleTimeout" => "<time_in_seconds>",
  
  # Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
  "newCommandTimeout" => "<time_in_seconds>",
);

capabilities = {
  # BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
  "browserstack.idleTimeout": "<time_in_seconds>",

  # Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
  "newCommandTimeout": "<time_in_seconds>",
}

caps = Selenium::WebDriver::Remote::Capabilities.new
# BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
caps["browserstack.idleTimeout"] = "<time_in_seconds>"

# Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
caps["newCommandTimeout"] = "<time_in_seconds>"

my $capabilities = {
  # BrowserStack's capability to increase timeout duration to a maximum of 300 seconds
  "browserstack.idleTimeout" => "<time_in_seconds>",
    
  # Appium's capabiliy to increase timeout duration
  "newCommandTimeout" => "<time_in_seconds>",
}

Handle exceptions

When your test script encounters an exception in the test flow, it might never reach the driver.quit command in your test script.

Some of the common causes for the exception to occur are:

• Unable to locate an element on the screen
• Elements are not interactable or clickable
• Elements did not load within a particular time, etc.

The recommended way to handle exceptions is to use a try...catch block in your test scripts. As a best practice add your code statements in a try block, and add the logic to handle any exceptions in the catch block of your test script.

Adding the try...catch block ensures that irrespective of whether the test script encounters an error or not, the driver.quit command is executed to avoid the BROWSERSTACK_IDLE_TIMEOUT error.

Check out our getting started section to see a sample script that uses wait.

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