• Article

Thread.Sleep Method (TimeSpan)

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Blocks the current thread for a specified time.

Namespace:  System.Threading
Assembly:  mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)

Syntax

'Declaration
Public Shared Sub Sleep ( _
    timeout As TimeSpan _
)

public static void Sleep(
    TimeSpan timeout
)

Parameters

  • timeout
    Type: System.TimeSpan
    A TimeSpan set to the amount of time for which the thread is blocked. Specify a duration of 1 millisecond to yield to other threads that might be waiting to execute. (We recommend a wait of 1 millisecond instead of a wait of 0.) Specify a duration of -1 milliseconds to block the thread indefinitely.

Exceptions

Exception Condition
ArgumentOutOfRangeException

The value of timeout is negative and is not equal to -1 milliseconds, or it is greater than Int32.MaxValue milliseconds.

Remarks

The thread will not be scheduled for execution by the operating system for the amount of time specified. This method changes the state of the thread to include WaitSleepJoin.

Important noteImportant Note:

Do not call Sleep from the main application thread in your Silverlight-based application. Doing so makes the user interface (UI) unresponsive, blocks DispatcherTimer and BackgroundWorker events, and blocks cross-thread calls to the UI thread that were made by using Dispatcher.

This overload of Sleep uses the total number of whole milliseconds in timeout. Fractional milliseconds are discarded.

This method does not perform standard COM and SendMessage pumping.

NoteNote:

If you need to sleep, but you want to perform standard COM and SendMessage pumping, consider using one of the overloads of the Join method that specifies a time-out interval. For example, replace Sleep(1000) with Thread.CurrentThread.Join(1000).

Version Information

Silverlight

Supported in: 5, 4, 3

Silverlight for Windows Phone

Supported in: Windows Phone OS 7.1, Windows Phone OS 7.0

XNA Framework

Supported in: Xbox 360, Windows Phone OS 7.0

Platforms

For a list of the operating systems and browsers that are supported by Silverlight, see Supported Operating Systems and Browsers.