How to switch to another Tab using Selenium WebDriver with Java

Question

I am opening google.com and then clicking on "GMail" hyperlink a new tab is opened on the same browser.

Now I want to switch to this new tab where GMail is opened using Selenium WebDriver.

Code snippet is :

  WebDriver wd = new ChromeDriver();
  wd.get("https://www.google.co.in/?gws_rd=ssl");       
  wd.findElement(By.linkText("Gmail")).sendKeys(Keys.CONTROL,Keys.RETURN);

Now I want to go to the tab where I have opened GMail link. I have googled through N number of solutions but none of them worked.

For e.g.

Solution 1 :

String Tab1 = wd.getWindowHandle(); 
ArrayList<String> availableWindows = new ArrayList<String>(wd.getWindowHandles()); 
if (!availableWindows.isEmpty()) { 
wd.switchTo().window(availableWindows.get(1)); 
}

Solution 2 :

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("body")).sendKeys(Keys.CONTROL +"\t");

Kindly suggest. I am stuck on this.

Answer 1

Seems to me that driver.getWindowHandles() does not work for tabs... you'll always get back a one item array with the CURRENT tab's handle... [deleted old answer as this seems to be fixed now]

UPDATE (6/16/2016): the current version of Selenium (server standalone 2.53.0) seems to act differently. Now I'm using something like this to open/switch the driver to the new tab:

UPDATE (11/16/2016): Selenium 3.0.1 seems to have changed things again? I have to use javascript to open a new tab now. This seems to work in Chrome only... Firefox opens a new window. I'm going to see if that behavior can be changed using geckodriver's settings (capabilities/profile?).

// Actions actions = new Actions(driver); 
// actions.keyDown(Keys.CONTROL).sendKeys("t").keyUp(Keys.CONTROL).build().perform();

((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("window.open('about:blank', '_blank');");

Set<String> tab_handles = driver.getWindowHandles();
    int number_of_tabs = tab_handles.size();
    int new_tab_index = number_of_tabs-1;
    driver.switchTo().window(tab_handles.toArray()[new_tab_index].toString()); 

the getWindowHandles() method is now returning a Set. This has only been tested in Chrome so far, since Firefox version 47 currently has some serious problems using the firefoxdriver... and using geckodriver the Actions aren't working at all. [update 6/11/2016]: Firefox through geckodriver now returns a Set]

You can also do something like this.. cast it to ArrayList:

  //  set tab_index to the number of window/tab you want.  0 is the first tab 

       ArrayList<String> tabs_windows = new ArrayList<String> (driver.getWindowHandles());
    driver.switchTo().window(tabs_windows.get(tab_index));

Update: To get around the geckodriver bug, I've switched to using element.sendkeys... something like this seems to work in Marionette and Chrome.. (Update2): Updated to javascript because of changes in Selenium 3.0.1:

// driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("body")).sendKeys(Keys.chord(Keys.CONTROL, "t"));

((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("window.open('about:blank', '_blank');");

    Set<String> tab_handles = driver.getWindowHandles();
    int number_of_tabs = tab_handles.size();
    int new_tab_index = number_of_tabs-1;
    driver.switchTo().window(tab_handles.toArray()[new_tab_index].toString()); 

UPDATE (11/16/2016): the old method to close using Ctrl-W seems to be broken, too... use this:

((JavascriptExecutor)driver).executeScript("close();");

Answer 2

The way we manually switch to next tab is by pressing - CTRL + Page Down The same we can do using Selenium like -

driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("body")).sendKeys(Keys.CONTROL, Keys.PAGE_DOWN);