How to Sleep Milliseconds in Python

1. Python Sleep Using the time.sleep() Method
2. Python Sleep Using the threading.Timer() Method

In this tutorial, we will look into various methods to pause or suspend a program’s execution for a given amount of time in Python. Suppose we want to pause the program execution for few seconds to let the user read the instructions about the program’s next step. We need some method to tell the program to go to sleep for a specific number of seconds or milliseconds. We will also discuss a method to make the program call a provided function after a specific time interval without pausing or suspending the program execution

We can use the following methods to pause or suspend the program’s execution for a given amount of time in Python.

Python Sleep Using the time.sleep() Method

The time.sleep(secs) method pause or suspends the calling thread’s execution for the number of seconds provided in the secs argument. Therefore, we need to call the time.sleep() method to make the program go to sleep for a specific time.

The below example code demonstrates how to use the time.sleep() method to make the program sleep for the given number of seconds.

import time

time.sleep(1.5)
print("1.5 seconds have passed")

To make the program pause for milliseconds, we will need to divide the input by 1000, shown in the below example code:

import time

time.sleep(400 / 1000)
print("400 milliseconds have passed")

Python Sleep Using the threading.Timer() Method

The threading.Timer(interval, function, args, kwargs) method waits for the time equal to interval seconds and then calls the function with arguments args and keyword arguments kwargs if provided.

If we want the program to wait for a specific time and then call the function, the threading.Timer() method will be useful. The below example code demonstrates how to use the threading.Timer() method to make the program wait for interval seconds before performing some task.

from threading import Timer


def nextfunction():
    print("Next function is called!")


t = Timer(0.5, nextfunction)
t.start()