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?
Selenium – Can Selenium WebDriver open browser windows silently in the background
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Best Answer
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:
Then install PyVirtualDisplay from PyPI:
Sample Selenium script in Python in a headless mode with PyVirtualDisplay:
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: