Electron app.whenReady(): Handling Timeouts and Cancellation – Unresolved API Design Decision

Answer

Use Promise.race with a timeout promise and attach a .catch (or try/catch) to the race result.

Confirmed facts

• app.whenReady() returns a Promise with no parameters.
• Electron provides no built‑in timeout or cancellation mechanism.
• As of Electron v28 (latest stable 2024‑06) the project’s issue tracker shows no open proposal or PR to add such options.

Likely explanation

The only way to observe a timeout is to race the initialization promise against a timer that rejects; the original promise continues to settle independently, so you must ignore its later resolution if you treat the timeout as failure.

Steps for this case

1. Create a timeout promise: new Promise((_, reject) => setTimeout(() => reject(new Error('app.whenReady timeout')), ms)).
2. Race it: Promise.race([app.whenReady(), timeoutPromise]).
3. Attach a rejection handler to the race result (e.g., .catch(err => { /* handle timeout */ })) or use try/await.
4. If you treat a timeout as fatal, ignore any later resolution of the original app.whenReady() (do not chain another .then after the race).

Missing diagnostic detail

Do you need to abort Electron’s internal initialization after a timeout, or is it sufficient to ignore the result and let the original promise settle on its own? This determines whether you should merely ignore the timeout or implement additional cleanup logic.