How to hide geckodriver console window?

Question

I'm running Selenium 3.141.0 with python 3.6.7 on windows 10

My script runs the Firefox driver in headless, however a console window from geckodriver still pops up.

from selenium import webdriver

options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
options.add_argument('-headless')
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'c:\webdrivers\geckodriver.exe', log_path='C:\webdrivers\geckodriver.log', firefox_options=options)
driver.get('http://10.0.0.102/')

element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(
    EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "body-home-tile-pgDevServ"))
)
button = driver.find_element_by_id('body-home-tile-pgDevServ')
button.click()
element = WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(
    EC.presence_of_element_located((By.ID, "devserv-printQ-Inp"))
)
button = driver.find_element_by_id('devserv-printQ-Inp')
button.click()

Answer 1

I hacked the selenium lib, change the code in, \\AppData\\Roaming\\Python\\Python38\\site-packages\\selenium\\webdriver\\common\\service.py line 72 and below,

the original codes as:

        try:
        cmd = [self.path]
        cmd.extend(self.command_line_args())
        self.process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, env=self.env,
                                        close_fds=platform.system() != 'Windows',
                                        stdout=self.log_file,
                                        stderr=self.log_file,
                                        stdin=PIPE)

and add two more lines, like this

        try:
        cmd = [self.path]
        cmd.extend(self.command_line_args())
        CREATE_NO_WINDOW = 0x08000000
        self.process = subprocess.Popen(cmd, env=self.env,
                                        close_fds=platform.system() != 'Windows',
                                        stdout=self.log_file,
                                        stderr=self.log_file,
                                        creationflags=CREATE_NO_WINDOW,
                                        stdin=PIPE)

It works for windows.

Answer 2

I found a way, based on the solution by Anguo Zhao, to solve this without editing the selenium file itself, by monkey-patching it into the imported selenium module:

import functools

from selenium import webdriver

flag = 0x08000000  # No-Window flag
# flag = 0x00000008  # Detached-Process flag, if first doesn't work
webdriver.common.service.subprocess.Popen = functools.partial(
    webdriver.common.service.subprocess.Popen, creationflags=flag)

If you think that this might be executed more than once:

import functools
import subprocess

from selenium import webdriver

flag = 0x08000000  # No-Window flag
webdriver.common.service.subprocess.Popen = functools.partial(
    subprocess.Popen, creationflags=flag)

I couldn't find a place in the selenium module where it would use creationflags by itself, so that shouldn't break anything (as of now).

Natural Language Explanation:

With functools.partial , we create a "prepared" Popen -call that has the creationflags -argument already with it.
Then, we replace the original Popen that selenium tries to call with that prepared one.
Voilà, whenever something in selenium.webdriver.common.service tries to create a Popen -object, it will be the one that has been prepared with the creationflag.

Answer 3

After some messing around it seems like adding options.add_argument('--disable-gpu') fixes it (sometimes).

Running the script from vscode works, running the script with windows task scheduler works. Running from powershell or cmd does not work.