[selenium] Can Selenium WebDriver open browser windows silently in the background?

I have a Selenium test suite that runs many tests and on each new test it opens a browser window on top of any other windows I have open. Very jarring while working in a local environment. Is there a way to tell Selenium or the OS (Mac) to open the windows in the background?

If you are using Selenium web driver with Python, you can use PyVirtualDisplay, a Python wrapper for Xvfb and Xephyr.

PyVirtualDisplay needs Xvfb as a dependency. On Ubuntu, first install Xvfb:

sudo apt-get install xvfb

Then install PyVirtualDisplay from PyPI:

pip install pyvirtualdisplay

Sample Selenium script in Python in a headless mode with PyVirtualDisplay:

    #!/usr/bin/env python

    from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
    from selenium import webdriver

    display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
    display.start()

    # Now Firefox will run in a virtual display.
    # You will not see the browser.
    browser = webdriver.Firefox()
    browser.get('http://www.google.com')
    print browser.title
    browser.quit()

    display.stop()

EDIT

The initial answer was posted in 2014 and now we are at the cusp of 2018. Like everything else, browsers have also advanced. Chrome has a completely headless version now which eliminates the need to use any third-party libraries to hide the UI window. Sample code is as follows:

    from selenium import webdriver
    from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

    CHROME_PATH = '/usr/bin/google-chrome'
    CHROMEDRIVER_PATH = '/usr/bin/chromedriver'
    WINDOW_SIZE = "1920,1080"

    chrome_options = Options()
    chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
    chrome_options.add_argument("--window-size=%s" % WINDOW_SIZE)
    chrome_options.binary_location = CHROME_PATH

    driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH,
                              chrome_options=chrome_options
                             )
    driver.get("https://www.google.com")
    driver.get_screenshot_as_file("capture.png")
    driver.close()

It may be in options. Here is the identical Java code.

        ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
        chromeOptions.setHeadless(true);
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);

I suggest using PhantomJS. For more information, you may visit the Phantom Official Website.

As far as I know PhantomJS works only with Firefox...

After downloading PhantomJs.exe you need to import it to your project as you can see in the picture below PhantomJS.

I have placed mine inside: common ? Library ? phantomjs.exe

Now all you have to do inside your Selenium code is to change the line

browser = webdriver.Firefox()

To something like

import os
path2phantom = os.getcwd() + "\common\Library\phantomjs.exe"
browser = webdriver.PhantomJS(path2phantom)

The path to PhantomJS may be different... change as you like :)

This hack worked for me, and I'm pretty sure it will work for u too ;)

This is a simple Node.js solution that works in the new version 4.x (maybe also 3.x) of Selenium.

Chrome

const { Builder } = require('selenium-webdriver')
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');

let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').setChromeOptions(new chrome.Options().headless()).build()

await driver.get('https://example.com')

Firefox

const { Builder } = require('selenium-webdriver')
const firefox = require('selenium-webdriver/firefox');

let driver = await new Builder().forBrowser('firefox').setFirefoxOptions(new firefox.Options().headless()).build()

await driver.get('https://example.com')

The whole thing just runs in the background. It is exactly what we want.

For running without any browser, you can run it in headless mode.

I show you one example in Python that is working for me right now

from selenium import webdriver


options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("headless")
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='/Users/${userName}/Drivers/chromedriver', chrome_options=options)

I also add you a bit more of info about this in the official Google website https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/04/headless-chrome

Since Chrome 57 you have the headless argument:

var options = new ChromeOptions();
options.AddArguments("headless");
using (IWebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options))
{
    // The rest of your tests
}

The headless mode of Chrome performs 30.97% better than the UI version. The other headless driver PhantomJS delivers 34.92% better than the Chrome's headless mode.

PhantomJSDriver

using (IWebDriver driver = new PhantomJSDriver())
{
     // The rest of your test
}

The headless mode of Mozilla Firefox performs 3.68% better than the UI version. This is a disappointment since the Chrome's headless mode achieves > 30% better time than the UI one. The other headless driver PhantomJS delivers 34.92% better than the Chrome's headless mode. Surprisingly for me, the Edge browser beats all of them.

var options = new FirefoxOptions();
options.AddArguments("--headless");
{
    // The rest of your test
}

This is available from Firefox 57+

The headless mode of Mozilla Firefox performs 3.68% better than the UI version. This is a disappointment since the Chrome's headless mode achieves > 30% better time than the UI one. The other headless driver PhantomJS delivers 34.92% better than the Chrome's headless mode. Surprisingly for me, the Edge browser beats all of them.

Note: PhantomJS is not maintained any more!

Just add a simple "headless" option argument.

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome("PATH_TO_DRIVER", options=options)

Use it ...

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=options)

Here is a .NET solution that worked for me:

Download PhantomJS at http://phantomjs.org/download.html.

Copy the .exe file from the bin folder in the download folder and paste it to the bin debug/release folder of your Visual Studio project.

Add this using

using OpenQA.Selenium.PhantomJS;

In your code, open the driver like this:

PhantomJSDriver driver = new PhantomJSDriver();
using (driver)
{
   driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("http://testing-ground.scraping.pro/login");
   // Your code here
}

I had the same problem with my chromedriver using Python and options.add_argument("headless") did not work for me, but then I realized how to fix it so I bring it in the code below:

opt = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
opt.arguments.append("headless")

One way to achieve this is by running the browser in headless mode. Another advantage of this is that tests are executed faster.

Please find the code below to set headless mode in the Chrome browser.

package chrome;

public class HeadlessTesting {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver",
                "ChromeDriverPath");
        ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
        options.addArguments("headless");
        options.addArguments("window-size=1200x600");
        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
        driver.get("https://contentstack.built.io");
        driver.get("https://www.google.co.in/");
        System.out.println("title is: " + driver.getTitle());
        File scrFile = ((TakesScreenshot) driver)
                .getScreenshotAs(OutputType.FILE);
        FileUtils.copyFile(scrFile, new File("pathTOSaveFile"));
        driver.quit();
    }
}

If you are using the Google Chrome driver, you can use this very simple code (it worked for me):

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver2_win32/chromedriver.exe', options=chrome_options)
driver.get('https://www.anywebsite.com')

If you are using Ubuntu (Gnome), one simple workaround is to install Gnome extension auto-move-window: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/16/auto-move-windows/

Then set the browser (eg. Chrome) to another workspace (eg. Workspace 2). The browser will silently run in other workspace and not bother you anymore. You can still use Chrome in your workspace without any interruption.

On Windows you can use win32gui:

import win32gui
import win32con
import subprocess

class HideFox:
    def __init__(self, exe='firefox.exe'):
        self.exe = exe
        self.get_hwnd()

    def get_hwnd(self):
      win_name = get_win_name(self.exe)
      self.hwnd = win32gui.FindWindow(0,win_name)

    def hide(self):
        win32gui.ShowWindow(self.hwnd, win32con.SW_MINIMIZE)
        win32gui.ShowWindow(self.hwnd, win32con.SW_HIDE)

    def show(self):
        win32gui.ShowWindow(self.hwnd, win32con.SW_SHOW)
        win32gui.ShowWindow(self.hwnd, win32con.SW_MAXIMIZE)

def get_win_name(exe):
    ''' Simple function that gets the window name of the process with the given name'''
    info = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
    info.dwFlags |= subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
    raw = subprocess.check_output('tasklist /v /fo csv', startupinfo=info).split('\n')[1:-1]
    for proc in raw:
        try:
            proc = eval('[' + proc + ']')
            if proc[0] == exe:
                return proc[8]
        except:
            pass
    raise ValueError('Could not find a process with name ' + exe)

Example:

hider = HideFox('firefox.exe') # Can be anything, e.q., phantomjs.exe, notepad.exe, etc.
# To hide the window
hider.hide()
# To show again
hider.show()

However, there is one problem with this solution - using send_keys method makes the window show up. You can deal with it by using JavaScript which does not show a window:

def send_keys_without_opening_window(id_of_the_element, keys)
    YourWebdriver.execute_script("document.getElementById('" + id_of_the_element + "').value = '" + keys + "';")

Chrome 57 has an option to pass the --headless flag, which makes the window invisible.

This flag is different from the --no-startup-window as the last doesn't launch a window. It is used for hosting background apps, as this page says.

Java code to pass the flag to Selenium webdriver (ChromeDriver):

ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.addArguments("--headless");
ChromeDriver chromeDriver = new ChromeDriver(options);

On *nix, you can also run a headless X Window server like Xvfb and point the DISPLAY environment variable to it:

Fake X server for testing?

I used this code for Firefox in Windows and got answer(reference here):

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options

Options = Options()
Options.headless = True

Driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=Options, executable_path='geckodriver.exe')
Driver.get(...)
...

But I didn't test it for other browsers.