Can Selenium WebDriver open browser windows silently in the background?

by

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()

More Related Contents:

  1. What is the exact purpose of Selenium Grid?
  2. What Is Selenium And What Is WebDriver?
  3. What is the difference between WebDriver and WebElement in Selenium?
  4. NoSuchElementException, Selenium unable to locate element
  5. How does chrome driver interact with Chrome browser?
  6. Can Selenium interact with an existing browser session?
  7. How to inspect element for Selenium v3.6 as FireBug is not an option any more for FF 56?
  8. Page load strategy for Chrome driver (Updated till Selenium v3.12.0)
  9. Unable to find a matching set of capabilities with selenium 3.4.3, firefox 54.0 and gecko driver 0.17
  10. Clarification of the cause of mixing Implicit and Explicit waits in Selenium doc
  11. Reached error page: about:neterror when trying to navigate to other tabs if there is a form submit under that tab
  12. What is benefit of using ChromeDriver over WebDriver if we are using only Chrome Browser in our Selenium Automation Script
  13. Tests fail immediately with unknown error: DevToolsActivePort file doesn’t exist when running Selenium grid through systemd
  14. Refreshing Web Page By WebDriver When Waiting For Specific Condition
  15. Selenium and non-headless browser keeps asking for Captcha
  16. org.openqa.selenium.ElementNotInteractableException: Element could not be scrolled into view when trying to click a button
  17. What is the internal working difference between Implicit Wait and Explicit Wait
  18. ERROR:ssl_client_socket_openssl.cc(1158)] handshake failed with ChromeDriver Chrome browser and Selenium
  19. Selenium Grid: MaxSessions vs MaxInstances
  20. Cannot get automation extension from timeout: Timed out receiving message from renderer
  21. What is the difference between a CSS selector and XPath? And which is better with respect to performance for cross-browser testing?
  22. org.openqa.selenium.InvalidCookieDomainException: Document is cookie-averse using Selenium and WebDriver
  23. What is the difference between a CSS and XPath selector? And which is better with respect to performance for cross-browser testing?
  24. I need to find an element in Selenium by CSS
  25. Get PID of Browser launched by selenium
  26. Is there a Selenium WebDriver available for the Microsoft Edge browser?
  27. Handle windows authentication pop up on Chrome
  28. selenium implicitly wait doesn’t work
  29. How does Selenium WebDriver’s isDisplayed() method work
  30. isElementPresent is very slow in case if element does not exist.

Leave a Comment