How to change the target directory for a screenshot using Selenium webdriver in Firefox or Chrome

Question

I want to make a screenshot of a webpage and save it in a custom location using Selenium webdriver with Python. I tried saving the screenshot to a custom location using both Firefox and Chrome but it always saves the screenshot in the project dir. Here is my Firefox version:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary

profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
profile.set_preference("browser.download.folderList", 2)
profile.set_preference("browser.download.dir", 
'C:\\Users\\User\\WebstormProjects')
binary = FirefoxBinary("C:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe")


def foxScreen():
    driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_binary=binary, 
    firefox_profile=profile)
    driver.get("http://google.com")
    driver.save_screenshot("foxScreen.png")
    driver.quit()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    foxScreen()

And here is my Chrome version:

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"download.default_directory": r'C:\\Users\\User\\WebstormProjects',
         "directory_upgrade": True}
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
chromedriver = 
"C:\\Users\\User\\Downloads\\chromedriver_win32\\chromedriver.exe"


def chromeScreen():
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, 
                              executable_path=chromedriver)
    driver.get("http://google.com")
    driver.save_screenshot("chromeScreen.png")
    driver.quit()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    chromeScreen()

I have tried different notations for the location I want the screenshot saved to but that does not seem to help. What should I change so it does not save the screenshot to the project directory but to a given custom location?

Answer 1

You need to consider a couple of facts as follows:

profile.set_preference('key', 'value')

set_preference(key, value) sets the preference that we want in the firefox_profile. This preference is in effect when a specific Firefox Profile is invoked.

---

save_screenshot(filename)

As per the documentation save_screenshot(filename) saves a screenshot of the current window to a PNG image file. This method returns False if there is any IOError, else returns True. Use full paths in your filename.

• Args:

  filename: The full path you wish to save your screenshot to. This should end with a .png extension.
  

• Usage:

  driver.save_screenshot(‘/Screenshots/foo.png’)
  

So, save_screenshot(filename) expects the full path you wish to save your screenshot to. As you were using:

driver.save_screenshot("foxScreen.png")

Hence the screenshot was always saved within the project directory.

---

Solution

To save the screenshot in a different directory you need to pass the absolute path as follows:

driver.save_screenshot("./my_directory/foo.png")

---

Reference

You can find a detailed discussion in How to take screenshot with Selenium WebDriver

Answer 2

Could try adding a few more options. This worked for me:

prefs = {"download.default_directory": r"\download\directory",
         "download.prompt_for_download": False,
         "download.directory_upgrade": True,
         "safebrowsing.enabled": True}