How to Get User Input With Timeout in Python

This tutorial will discuss getting input from a user with a timeout period using Python’s inputimeout library.

Python Get User Input With Timeout

If we want to take input from a user within a specific period, like 5 seconds, we can use the inputimeout library of Python. We can use pip to install this library using the below line of code.

pip install inputimeout

We can run this command in PowerShell or a command prompt to install the inputimeout library. Make sure pip is installed and added to the PATH before running the above command.

If pip is not added to the path, we have to provide the full path to the pip.exe file along with its name to use in the PowerShell or command prompt. The example usage is shown below.

C:\Users\ammar\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\Scripts\pip.exe install inputimeout

If inputimeout is installed without any errors, we can import the inputimeout and the TimeoutOccured modules to use in our code. The inputimeout() function will take input from the user, and we can pass two arguments inside it.

The first argument, prompt, is the message we want to show to the user while taking input; this argument is optional. The second argument, timeout, is used to set the time in seconds, and the function will wait till the given time. After that, it will raise an exception, and we can use the exception name TimeoutOccured, which we can use with the try-except statement to avoid an error.

from inputimeout import inputimeout, TimeoutOccurred

try:
    user_input = inputimeout(prompt="Enter input: \n", timeout=5)
except TimeoutOccurred:
    user_input = "you have not entered any input"
print(user_input)

Output:

Enter input:

you have not entered any input

In the above code, we used Python’s try-except statement to avoid the exception if the user did not enter any input in the given time. We used the name of the exception to set the input to something else, like a default value.

If the user enters input, it will be printed, and if the user does not enter any input during the given timeout, the default input will be printed. The input is saved in the user_input variable.

Check this link for more details about the inputimeout library.