The Selenium WebDriver provides an implicit wait for synchronizing tests. When an implicit wait is implemented in tests, if WebDriver cannot find an element in the DOM, it will wait for a defined amount of time for the element to appear in the DOM. Once the specified wait time is over, it will try searching for the element once again. If the element is not found in specified time, it will throw the NoSuchElement exception.

In other terms, an implicit wait polls the DOM for a certain amount of time when trying to find an element or elements if they are not immediately available. The default setting is 0.

Once set, the implicit wait is set for the life of the WebDriver object's instance.

In this recipe, we will briefly explore the use of an implicit wait. However, it is recommended that you avoid or minimize the use of an implicit wait.

@Test
public void testWithImplicitWait() {
  WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();
  // Launch the sample Ajax application
  driver.get("http://cookbook.seleniumacademy.com/AjaxDemo.html");

  // Set the implicit wait time out to 10 Seconds
  driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

  try {
    // Get link for Page 4 and click on it
    driver.findElement(By.linkText("Page 4")).click();

    // Get an element with id page4 and verify it's text
    WebElement message = driver.findElement(By.id("page4"));
    assertTrue(message.getText().contains("Nunc nibh tortor"));
  } finally {
    driver.quit();
  }
}

driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);