How to Add a Timeout or Delay in a Batch File

Delay running in batch scripting

If you are writing a batch file and you don’t want to continue until somebody presses a key, you can do it really easy with the timeout command.

For example, you want to open multiple URLs at once using a batch script, and you want to add a delay of some seconds between each URL because they open all at once which freezes up the machine.

Here is the script without timeout parameters:

@echo off
start chrome.exe "http://google.com" 
start chrome.exe "https://yahoo.com"
start chrome.exe "https://bing.com"

Delay x seconds before running the next command

For instance, using the following on the command prompt will pause the terminal for 10 seconds unless you press a key:

@echo on
start chrome.exe "http://google.com"
timeout /t 10
start chrome.exe "https://yahoo.com"
timeout /t 10
start chrome.exe "https://bing.com"
pause

The output when you run the batch script:

Delay x seconds with nobrake

Whereas this command will pause the terminal for 30 seconds whether you press a key or not:

@echo on
start chrome.exe "http://google.com"
timeout /t 10 /nobreak
start chrome.exe "https://yahoo.com"
timeout /t 10 /nobreak
start chrome.exe "https://bing.com"
pause

The output when you run the batch script:

And this one will pause forever until you press a key:

@echo on
start chrome.exe "http://google.com"
timeout /t -1
start chrome.exe "https://yahoo.com"
timeout /t 10 /nobreak
start chrome.exe "https://bing.com"
pause

When you run the script, after executing the first command, you need to press any key to execute the next one.