Understanding JavaScript Promise Cancellation: Why It Doesn't Exist and Workaround Alternatives

You can't cancel a JavaScript promise. There's no .cancel() method, no AbortController integration, no built-in way to say 'never mind, stop.'

The TC39 committee considered adding cancellation in 2016, but the proposal was withdrawn after heated debate.

Part of the problem is that cancelling arbitrary code mid-execution can leave resources in a dirty state (open handles, half-written data), so true cancellation requires cooperative cleanup, which undermines the simplicity people want from a .cancel() method.

But you can do something weirder: return a promise that never resolves, await it, and...

A promise that never resolves is a surprisingly clean way to interrupt an async function.