Getting java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Connection timed out in android

If you are using Kotlin + Retrofit + Coroutines then just use try and catch for network operations like,

viewModelScope.launch(Dispatchers.IO) {
        try {
            val userListResponseModel = apiEndPointsInterface.usersList()
            returnusersList(userListResponseModel)
        } catch (e: Exception) {
            e.printStackTrace()
        }
    }

Where, Exception is type of kotlin and not of java.lang

This will handle every exception like,

  1. HttpException
  2. SocketTimeoutException
  3. FATAL EXCEPTION: DefaultDispatcher etc

Here is my usersList() function

@GET(AppConstants.APIEndPoints.HOME_CONTENT)
suspend fun usersList(): UserListResponseModel

Note: Your RetrofitClient Classs must have this as client

OkHttpClient.Builder()
            .connectTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
            .readTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
            .writeTimeout(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS)

I'm aware this question is a bit old. But since I stumbled on this while doing research, I thought a little addition might be helpful.

As stated the error cannot be solved by the client, since it is a network related issue. However, what you can do is retry connecting a few times. This may work as a workaround until the real issue is fixed.

for (int retries = 0; retries < 3; retries++) {
    try {
        final HttpClient client = createHttpClientWithDefaultSocketFactory(null, null);
        final HttpResponse response = client.execute(get);
        final int statusCode = response.getStatusLine().getStatusCode();
        if (statusCode != 200) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("GET Request on '" + get.getURI().toString() + "' resulted in " + statusCode);
        } else {                
            return response.getEntity();
        }
    } catch (final java.net.SocketTimeoutException e) {
        // connection timed out...let's try again                
    }
}

Maybe this helps someone.


I've searched all over the web and after reading lot of docs regarding connection timeout exception, the thing I understood is that, preventing SocketTimeoutException is beyond our limit. One way to effectively handle it is to define a connection timeout and later handle it by using a try-catch block. Hope this will help anyone in future who are facing the same issue.

HttpUrlConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();

//set the timeout in milliseconds
conn.setConnectTimeout(7000);