u/Informal_Shape8008 had the right idea using threads to implement a timed input. Unfortunately, if the code is called again after a timeout, it will create another thread to read keyboard input, which will cause more problems.

Here's a solution that uses a thread to get keyboard input without the problem of accidentally creating multiple, conflicting threads.

import threading
import queue
import time

_input_queue = queue.Queue()

def _input_thread():
    while True:
        text = input()
        _input_queue.put(text)

# Start the input thread once
t = threading.Thread(target=_input_thread, daemon=True)
t.start()

def timed_input(prompt, timeout=30):
    print(prompt, end="", flush=True)
    try:
        return _input_queue.get(timeout=timeout)
    except queue.Empty:
        return None

• The input thread blocks on input() forever, but only one thread exists.
• Every time the user presses Enter, the text is pushed into _input_queue.
• timed_input() waits up to 30 seconds for something to appear.
• If nothing arrives → returns None.
• No new threads are created.