Can Selenium WebDriver open browser windows silently in the background

Question

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

User · Answer

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

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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

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There are a few ways  but it isn t a simple  quot set a configuration value quot   Unless you invest in a headless browser  which doesn t suit everyone s requirements  it is a little bit of a hack  How to hide Firefox window  Selenium WebDriver   and Is it possible to hide the browser in Selenium RC  You can  supposedly   pass in some parameters into Chrome  specifically  --no-startup-window Note that for some browsers  especially Internet  Explorer  it will hurt your tests to not have it run in focus  You can also hack about a bit with AutoIt  to hide the window once it s opened

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Since Chrome 57 you have the headless argument  var options   new ChromeOptions    options AddArguments  quot headless quot    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  gt  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  quot --headless quot             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  gt  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

User · Answer

Just add a simple  quot headless quot  option argument  from selenium import webdriver  options   webdriver ChromeOptions   options add argument  quot --headless quot   driver   webdriver Chrome  quot PATH TO DRIVER quot   options options

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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

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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  quot --headless quot   driver   webdriver Chrome  chromedriver2 win32 chromedriver exe   options chrome options  driver get  https   www anywebsite com

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It may be in options  Here is the identical Java code          ChromeOptions chromeOptions   new ChromeOptions            chromeOptions setHeadless true           WebDriver driver   new ChromeDriver chromeOptions

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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

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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

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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  quot webdriver chrome driver quot                    quot ChromeDriverPath quot            ChromeOptions options   new ChromeOptions            options addArguments  quot headless quot            options addArguments  quot window-size 1200x600 quot            WebDriver driver   new ChromeDriver options           driver get  quot https   contentstack built io quot            driver get  quot https   www google co in  quot            System out println  quot title is   quot    driver getTitle             File scrFile     TakesScreenshot  driver                   getScreenshotAs OutputType FILE           FileUtils copyFile scrFile  new File  quot pathTOSaveFile quot             driver quit

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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

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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  quot document getElementById   quot    id of the element    quot    value     quot    keys    quot    quot

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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    quot 1920 1080 quot       chrome options   Options       chrome options add argument  quot --headless quot       chrome options add argument  quot --window-size  s quot    WINDOW SIZE      chrome options binary location   CHROME PATH      driver   webdriver Chrome executable path CHROMEDRIVER PATH                                chrome options chrome options                                    driver get  quot https   www google com quot       driver get screenshot as file  quot capture png quot       driver close

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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

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I had the same problem with my chromedriver using Python and options add argument  quot headless quot   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  quot headless quot

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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      quot  common Library phantomjs exe quot  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

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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  quot http   testing-ground scraping pro login quot          Your code here

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

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