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I know how to start Chrome with the DevTools open so please don't tell me it is a duplicate of How to open Chrome Developer console in Selenium WebDriver using JAVA

I'm trying to have the DevTools open to a specific panel. By default it opens on the Elements panel but I want it to open on the Console panel instead:

enter image description here

I've seen this command line switch --devtools-flags but I haven't found any example usage of it. Essentially what I'm trying to achieve is something similar to that. Obviously that doesn't work but you get the gist:

const { Options } = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');
// …
const options = new Options().addArguments([
  'auto-open-devtools-for-tabs',
  'devtools-flags="panel=console"' /* <- That doesn't work. What else would?  */
]);
// …
customcommander
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1 Answers1

1

I figured out how to do this for my Ruby on Rails app that uses RSpec and Capybara. Here's the code that I use to configure my Capybara driver to select the Console tab and dock the devtools to the bottom:

options = Selenium::WebDriver::Chrome::Options.new
options.add_preference(
  'devtools',
  'preferences' => {
    'currentDockState' => '"bottom"', # Or '"undocked"', '"right"', etc.
    'panel-selectedTab' => '"console"',
  }
)

...

Capybara::Selenium::Driver.new(
  app,
  browser: :chrome,
  options: options,
  desired_capabilities: capabilities,

You should be able to call the setUserPreferences function to set user preferences: https://www.selenium.dev/selenium/docs/api/javascript/module/selenium-webdriver/chrome_exports_Options.html#setUserPreferences

const { Options } = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');
// …
const options = new Options().addArguments([
  "auto-open-devtools-for-tabs"
]).setUserPreferences({
  "devtools": {
    "preferences": {
      "panel-selectedTab": "\"console\""
      // "currentDockState": "\"bottom\"" // Or "\"undocked\"", "\"right\"", etc.
    }
  }
});

(I haven't tested this for JS, so please try it out and let me know if it works.)

I figured out how to set these preferences by looking at ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences. This is where my main Google Chrome installation stores my user preferences, and it's JSON data.

You can view all of the possible settings under devtools => preferences. Note that all the values are strings that are parsed as JSON, so you need to "double-wrap" any strings in your code, e.g. "\"console\"".

You can open your main Google Chrome browser and change the settings in the UI, and then re-open your Preferences file to see what JSON you need to set.

ndbroadbent
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