jest-fake-timers

Overview

Per jestjs.io/docs/timer-mocks (opens in new window), Jest 27+ uses modern fake timers built on @sinonjs/fake-timers. The API differs slightly from raw Sinon - Jest exposes jest.advanceTimersByTime instead of clock.tick, and jest.setSystemTime instead of clock.setSystemTime.

When to use

• Jest tests for code using setTimeout / setInterval / Date.
• Promise-based async timing tests.
• Replacing legacy useFakeTimers('legacy') with modern.

Authoring

Enable

beforeAll(() => {
  jest.useFakeTimers();
  jest.setSystemTime(new Date('2026-05-20T14:30:00Z'));
});

afterAll(() => {
  jest.useRealTimers();
});

For a single test, call the same three lines inside the test body and jest.useRealTimers() at the end.

Advance time

test('debounce fires after 300ms', () => {
  let fired = false;
  setTimeout(() => { fired = true; }, 300);

  jest.advanceTimersByTime(299);
  expect(fired).toBe(false);

  jest.advanceTimersByTime(1);
  expect(fired).toBe(true);
});

Promise-based timers

For async code:

test('async debounce', async () => {
  let resolved = false;
  setTimeout(async () => {
    await fetchData();
    resolved = true;
  }, 100);

  await jest.advanceTimersByTimeAsync(100);
  expect(resolved).toBe(true);
});

Per Jest docs, advanceTimersByTimeAsync lets microtasks run between timer ticks.

Run all pending timers

test('chain of timeouts completes', () => {
  let count = 0;
  function recur() {
    if (++count < 5) setTimeout(recur, 100);
  }
  recur();

  jest.runAllTimers();
  expect(count).toBe(5);
});

Run only pending (not recursive)

jest.runOnlyPendingTimers();

Avoids infinite loops for self-scheduling code.

Selective faking, DST, and fetch

Selective faking (doNotFake), DST / timezone tests, and mixing fake timers with a mocked fetch are in references/advanced-scenarios.md.

Anti-patterns

Limitations

• Modern fake timers are the default since Jest 27. Older projects may still use legacy.
• doNotFake is fragile. Some functions internally use Date.now() - may behave unexpectedly.
• DST + TZ interaction is Node-runtime-dependent. ICU data ships with Node.
• advanceTimersByTime doesn't process Promises. Use the Async variant for promise-chain testing.

References

• Jest timer mocks: jestjs.io/docs/timer-mocks (opens in new window).
• @sinonjs/fake-timers (underlying): github.com/sinonjs/fake-timers (opens in new window).
• Companion catalog: dst-transition-reference.
• Sibling library (non-Jest test runners): sinon-fake-timers-js.
• Cross-language: freezegun-python, timecop-ruby, mockclock-jvm, libfaketime-c.
• Test matrix: timezone-test-matrix-builder.