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MS Delay Parameter

The ms_delay parameter adds a delay (in milliseconds) before capturing the screenshot, allowing time for animations, dynamic content, or resources to load.

Specifications

Property	Value
Type	integer
Required	No
Default	null
Range	1-5000
API	Both HTML/CSS and Screenshot APIs

Description

The MS Delay parameter:

Adds a specified delay before capturing the screenshot
Useful for waiting for animations to complete
Helps ensure dynamic content is fully loaded
Can be used to capture specific states of interactive elements

Adding a delay increases the total processing time of your request. Only use delays when necessary, and keep them as short as possible for your use case.

Examples

Waiting for Animation

{
    "html": "<div class='animate-fade-in'>Content with animation</div>",
    "ms_delay": 1000
}

Capturing Slow Loading Sites

{
    "url": "https://example.com/slow-page",
    "ms_delay": 2000
}

Minimal Delay

{
    "html": "<div>Simple content with short delay</div>",
    "ms_delay": 100
}

Common values

500 - typical iframe with a single async asset.
1000 - Twitter or Instagram embed waiting for its widget script.
2000 - slow third-party widget that fetches data on mount.
5000 - avoid. If you need 5 seconds, your render is probably exceeding the budget. Use wait_for_selector instead.

When to use

Use ms_delay when the content depends on an embed that does not expose a stable selector to wait for. Twitter and Instagram embed widgets are the canonical case. For your own markup, prefer wait_for_selector since it returns as soon as the element exists.

Common mistakes

Stacking ms_delay and a long render budget. A 4000ms delay plus a 25-second JavaScript render leaves only one second of margin. Trim the delay or move to webhook_url.
Using delay when a selector exists. If you control the page, expose a marker like <body data-ready="true"> and use wait_for_selector="body[data-ready='true']" instead.

Documentation