Troubleshooting unclickable elements in headless mode with Selenium and Python

Other Questions Headless Browser
1

Hey everyone! I’m working on a project to grab info from my company’s booking system using Selenium and Python. It was all good when I could see the browser, but now I’m trying to run it headless and I’m stuck.

Here’s the deal: I added the ‘headless’ option to my Chrome setup, and now I’m getting this ‘element not interactable’ error. It’s driving me nuts!

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

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')

service = Service('path/to/chromedriver')
browser = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=chrome_options)

Has anyone run into this before? Any tips on how to make elements clickable in headless mode? I’m scratching my head here. Thanks in advance for any help!

2

I’ve definitely been in your shoes before, Mike. Headless mode can be tricky! One thing that helped me was adding a wait before interacting with elements. Sometimes in headless, the page doesn’t load as quickly as in normal mode.

Try using WebDriverWait to ensure the element is present and clickable before interacting:

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

element = WebDriverWait(browser, 10).until(
    EC.element_to_be_clickable((By.ID, 'your-element-id'))
)
element.click()

This waits up to 10 seconds for the element to be clickable. If that doesn’t work, you might need to scroll the element into view or use JavaScript to click it. Let me know if you need more details on those approaches!

3

yo mike, been there done that. headless can be a pain. have u tried using execute_script() to click? sometimes it works when normal clicks fail. like this:

browser.execute_script(“arguments[0].click();”, element)

might do the trick. if not, try adding a lil delay before clicking. good luck man!

4

I encountered a similar issue when transitioning to headless mode. One often overlooked solution is adjusting the browser window size. In headless mode, the default window size can be quite small, causing elements to be out of view or not rendered properly.

Try setting a specific window size in your Chrome options:

chrome_options.add_argument(‘–window-size=1920,1080’)

This ensures a consistent viewport size, potentially resolving element interaction issues. If that doesn’t solve it, you might need to implement a combination of explicit waits and JavaScript execution to interact with stubborn elements. Let me know if you need more specific guidance on those techniques.