Can Selenium WebDriver open browser windows silently 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()

There are a few ways, but it isn't a simple "set a configuration value". 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.

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);