Busy wait

Reports calls to java.lang.Thread.sleep() that occur inside loops.

Such calls are indicative of "busy-waiting". Busy-waiting is often inefficient, and may result in unexpected deadlocks as busy-waiting threads do not release locked resources.

Example:

  class X {
     volatile int x;
     public void waitX() throws Exception {
      while (x > 0) {
        Thread.sleep(10);//warning: Call to 'Thread.sleep()' in a loop, probably busy-waiting
      }
    }
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

BusyWait

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Threading issues

Inspection ID: BusyWait

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection BusyWait

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3, Qodana for JVM 2025.3,

Last modified: 03 December 2025