Question

What are the main disadvantages of using implicit wait in Selenium?

Answer 1

Hey Aaron, the main disadvantage of implicit wait is that it slows down test performance. The implicit wait will tell to the web driver to wait for certain amount of time before it throws a "No Such Element Exception". The default setting is 0. Once we set the time, web driver will wait for that time before throwing an exception. So this slows down the testing of your automation script, as the driver has to wait for specific amount of time. 

Now another disadvantage of implicit wait is that, let's say, you set the waiting limit to be 10 seconds, and the elements appear in the DOM in 11 seconds, your tests will be failed because you told it to wait a maximum of 10 seconds. 

Comments

Implicit wait cannot handle non-webElements such as title, URLs, Alerts, etc.

This is also one of the main disadvantage of implicit waits.

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Well said @Amol Nawale!