How do I set a timezone in Selenium Chromedriver?

Question

I can't figure out how to set a timezone when using Chromedriver. Is there some ChromeOptions argument or something?

The issue is that when I go to some sites (for example, https://whoer.net), it shows the system time that is equal to the time set on Windows. And I want to be able to change the Chromedriver's timezone somehow to perform timezone dependent testing.

I tried to set some chrome options:

Map<String, Object> chromeOptions = new HashMap<String, Object>();
chromeOptions.put("args", Arrays.asList("--disable-system-timezone-automatic-detection", "--local-timezone"));
DesiredCapabilities capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
capabilities.setCapability(ChromeOptions.CAPABILITY, chromeOptions);

It doesn't work.

Tried to do some weird thing using Javascript:

((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("Date.prototype.getTime = function() { return 1 };");
   

It didn't help either.

EDIT:

Found this https://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/8838/faking-system-time-date-with-selenium-webdriver

Tried to execute javascript on page with the code copied from TimeShift.js like this:

((JavascriptExecutor) driver).executeScript("/*code from TimeShift.js here*/ TimeShift.setTimezoneOffset(-60);");

System time at https://whoer.net didn't change. What am I doing wrong?

Delubrum

It will always show the time set on Windows. Change the time on Windows. – Passion

Maybe this similiar question can help you #35848543 – Uprear

@Uprear In that question he is scraping a timezone from some site and then he can choose the desired timezone from the site's menu. It's different. – Delubrum

@ElliottFrisch I know I can change the time on Windows, even can do it in java code: Runtime.getRuntime().exec("cmd /C time " + "16:56:10"); but this option isn't good for me since I want to perform a multithreaded test with many instances of Chromedriver at the same time and I want each instance to have it's own system time. – Delubrum

@JeffC Ok, edited the question. – Delubrum

Does the application get time from local Windows or server? – Lublin

@Lublin I want the application to get the time from the proxy's ip and I want the browser to think it's the system time – Delubrum

I believe you cannot wish the application to get time from other sources because the code to get time is in the application. You need to know where does it get time from. – Lublin

@Lublin If you are talking about my java application that uses Chromedriver, of course, I can do something with system time in the application. The problem is with the driver, when my application launches Chromedriver (and I see the browser), the problem is that the browser takes system time from my OS. I thought there is some way to say the browser (via some arguments or preferences etc.) not to take system time from Windows. Or to mock system time via executing javascript at the page which is loaded in the browser. But all the methods to do so don't work. – Delubrum

Sorry, I'm talking about the web application. If the web application uses JavaScript to get current datetime or timezone, JS will be executed by JS engine in the browser. The browser will get it from OS. You have to inject some code to shift time after the page load and before the date object has been initialized. – Lublin

@Lublin I tried to do it like this: var dateYouWant = 1363798981693; Date.prototype.getTime = function() { return dateYouWant; }; console.log( (new Date).getTime() ); and like this var d = new Date(2012, 0, 20); Date = undefined; Date = function(){return d;} but no luck, I keep seeing my Windows time at whoer.net. These methods supposed to work, I don't understand why they don't. Also tried to inject these pieces of code via Javascript Injector Google Chrome addon in the normal Google Chrome (not Chromedriver), no luck too. – Delubrum

Answer 1

You can do it by using Chrome DevTools Protocol, and here is the python code:

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
tz_params = {'timezoneId': 'America/New_York'}
driver.execute_cdp_cmd('Emulation.setTimezoneOverride', tz_params)

Forney

How can we do this for Firefox? – Khelat

Answer 2

with new selenium 4, it can be done natively with CDP

    WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
    WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();
    DevTools devTools = ((ChromeDriver) driver).getDevTools();
    devTools.createSession();
    devTools.send(Emulation.setTimezoneOverride("Antarctica/Casey"));

download the following maven dependency:

      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-java</artifactId>
        <version>4.0.0-alpha-6</version>
    </dependency>

list of time zones can be found here

Spenser

Answer 3

As far as I know you can only do this with TZ variable or with Decker Selenium.

Were you able to find a viable solution to this however? I am trying to do the same exact thing and have found very little in the way of solutions. I'm trying to do it with Python. The Tz variable solution is limited to Firefox in windows and decker selenium is a nightmare to install on windows.

UPDATED PYTHON SOLUTION VIABLE (below)

os.environ["DEBUSSY"] = "1"

SEE: How to set environment variables in Python

I am not sure if there is a Java equivalent but this Python equivalent worked for me in windows but only in Firefox. If you find a Java equivalent then that's awesome but if this issue is important to you Python is the way to go! :). I believe you are limited to three letters in windows but full customisation in Linux operating systems. E.g UTC, GMT etc, etc,. Hope this was helpful to you. I spent ages looking for this but turns out I was overthinking it. Good luck!!

Uvular

Unfortunately, I didn't find a way to do it and I have the same info as you. I'm thinking about trying Docker, but I didn't try it yet. I'm trying to do it with Java. If I find a way, I'll share it here. – Delubrum

@Delubrum Ive updated my answer, there is an easy and viable way to do this with Python. For Java, I don't know how. If you had to do it you would have to do it through command line. So in windows it would be: set TZ=UTC-4. And then you'd have to launch chromedriver after you have set it. Or something like that. :) – Uvular

Unfortunately I need to do it with Chrome, not Firefox :) And Chrome doesn't recognize TZ variable if you run it on Windows. But thank you anyway @JayRen – Delubrum

@Delubrum Oh right sorry about that but that to my knowledge is simply unachievable on Windows. Firefox is your next bet as it has way more privacy options. Maybe possible on Linux though. Not really sure. Well I hope you find your solution this solved my problem. – Uvular

In docker you can set TZ variable: docker run -d selenium/hub -e "TZ=US/Pacific"... link here – Fiery

Answer 4

Setting timezone to existing browser window is not a good idea by design:

1. Browser proxy ip address should be set on start.
2. Browser session starts on start (and may be restored before start).
3. Apropriate environment including timezone, user agent, etc should be resolved on start for proxy ip.

So i am proposing the following solution:

1. Find proxy ip that you want to use, geolocate it.
2. Restore existing browser session from database by proxy ip.
3. Use apropriate environment (timezone, user agent, etc) for proxy ip.

For example:

TZ="Asia/Shanghai" chromium --user-data-dir=".." --proxy-server=".." 

It works fine.

PS you need to patch your local chromium to use required environment parts like predefined user agent.

Axilla

Answer 5

Using java, selenium 4.10, on Mac. Got this to work using:

HashMap<String, String> browserEnvironment = new HashMap<>() {{
  // Force the timezone to be UTC
  put("TZ", "Etc/UTC");
}};

FirefoxDriverService service
      = new GeckoDriverService.Builder()
            .withEnvironment(BROWSER_ENVIRONMENT)
            .build();

WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(service, options);

Same approach also works with ChromeDriverService and ChromeDriver.

Selfrenunciation

Answer 6

This worked for me after creating the driver. Note I am working in c#:

driver = new ChromeDriver(service, options);

IDevTools devTools = driver as IDevTools;
DevToolsSession session = devTools.GetDevToolsSession();

session.SendCommand(new SetTimezoneOverrideCommandSettings
{
    TimezoneId = "GMT" //Or whatever timezone you want
});

Note that I had to add these:

using OpenQA.Selenium.DevTools;
using OpenQA.Selenium.DevTools.V120.Emulation;

Pogue