Discord Bot Stops Working Due to Promise Rejection Error

Other Questions Discord bot
1

I’m building a Discord bot that needs to send direct messages to all members in a server. The problem is when the bot can’t deliver a message to someone (maybe they blocked DMs or left the server), it throws a promise rejection error and completely stops working.

I need the bot to keep going even when it hits these errors. Right now it just crashes and won’t send any more messages.

Here’s what I have so far:

client.on('messageCreate', msg => {
  if (msg.content.startsWith('!broadcast')) {
    try {
      msg.guild.members.forEach(user =>
        user.send("Hello everyone!"))
    }
    catch(err) {
      console.log('Failed to send message!');
    }
  }
})

How can I make this work properly without the bot dying when it encounters delivery failures?

2

You’re getting unhandled promise rejections because user.send() returns a promise, but forEach doesn’t wait for async operations. Your try-catch block can’t catch these rejections.

I’ve hit this same issue building a notification bot. Switch to Promise.allSettled() instead of forEach - it handles all promises whether they succeed or fail:

client.on('messageCreate', async msg => {
  if (msg.content.startsWith('!broadcast')) {
    const promises = msg.guild.members.cache.map(member => 
      member.send("Hello everyone!").catch(err => null)
    );
    await Promise.allSettled(promises);
  }
})

This keeps your bot running even when some DMs fail.

3

your forEach ain’t handling async right. You should either wrap it in an async function and use await user.send().catch(err => console.log('dm failed')) or just add .catch() to each send call to avoid crashing the bot.

4

Had the same crash with my moderation bot last month. The problem is forEach fires all send operations at once without throttling - Discord’s API hates that. You’ll hit rate limits fast.

I fixed it by adding delays between messages and handling rejections properly. Process members one by one with a timeout instead of blasting everything at once:

client.on('messageCreate', async msg => {
  if (msg.content.startsWith('!broadcast')) {
    for (const member of msg.guild.members.cache.values()) {
      try {
        await member.send("Hello everyone!");
        await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 1000));
      } catch (error) {
        console.log(`Failed to DM ${member.user.tag}`);
      }
    }
  }
})

Keeps your bot stable and respects Discord’s rate limits.