How To Perform a Double Click in Selenium - Quick Guide

How to Perform a Double Click in Selenium?

By using the Actions class API to perform a double click in Selenium, the workflow involves three main steps: identifying the target element, creating an Actions object, and applying the double_click() method.

While double-clicks are a key interaction, it's also important to understand various Selenium click commands, which cover single clicks, context clicks, and other pointer-based actions you can automate.

• Locating the Web Element: Identify the element you want to interact with using Selenium locators such as id, name, class, or XPath. Accurate element selection is critical, as the double-click action will fail if the element is not interactable.
• Initializing the Actions Class: Create an instance of the Actions class by passing the WebDriver instance. This object allows chaining multiple user interactions, including double-click, right-click, drag-and-drop, and more.
• Performing the Double Click: Use the double_click() method on the located element, then call perform() to execute the action. This ensures that the double-click event is triggered correctly on the element.

Keeping these steps in mind, let's walk through a practical test scenario to understand how to perform a double click in Selenium using the Actions class API.

Test Scenario:

• Navigate to the e-commerce site (TestMu AI Selenium Playground).
• Wait for the search bar to appear.
• Type "Apple iPhone" into the search bar.
• Double-click the search input to select the typed text.
• Select all text using CTRL + A.
• Copy the selected text using CTRL + C.
• Clear the search bar.
• Paste the copied text back using CTRL + V.
• Press Enter to execute the search.
• Verify that the page title contains "Apple iPhone."
• Close the browser.

Code Implementation:

The following code demonstrates the implementation of the above test scenario and shows how to perform a double click in Selenium using the Actions class.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
import time

# ===== Local Chrome WebDriver =====
driver = webdriver.Chrome()

try:
    # Go to the main site
    driver.get("https://ecommerce-playground.lambdatest.io/")
    wait = WebDriverWait(driver, 10)

    # Locate the search bar and type "Apple iPhone."
    search_bar = wait.until(EC.presence_of_element_located((By.NAME, "search")))
    search_text = "Apple iPhone"
    search_bar.send_keys(search_text)
    time.sleep(1)  # Small pause to show typing

    # Double-click the text to select it
    actions = ActionChains(driver)
    actions.double_click(search_bar).perform()
    time.sleep(1)

    # Select all text in the input field (CTRL + A)
    search_bar.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'a')
    time.sleep(0.5)

    # Copy the selected text (CTRL + C)
    search_bar.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'c')
    time.sleep(0.5)

    # Clear the input and paste copied text
    search_bar.clear()
    time.sleep(0.5)
    search_bar.send_keys(Keys.CONTROL, 'v')
    time.sleep(1)

    # Press Enter to search
    search_bar.send_keys(Keys.ENTER)

    # Verify search result (title should contain "Apple iPhone")
    wait.until(EC.title_contains("Apple iPhone"))
    page_title = driver.title
    if "Apple iPhone" in page_title:
        print("Search verification successful!")
    else:
        print("Search verification failed!")

finally:
    driver.quit()

Code Walkthrough:

• Launch Browser: The script starts by launching a Chrome browser instance using webdriver.Chrome().
• Navigate to Site: Opens the TestMu AI E-commerce Playground homepage.
• Set Up Waits: A WebDriverWait object is created to synchronize interactions with elements as they load.
• Type in Search Field: Waits until the search input becomes available, then types "Apple iPhone".
• Perform Double Click: Uses ActionChains with .double_click(search_bar).perform() to select the typed text, simulating a real user double-click.
• Manipulate Text Using Keyboard Shortcuts:
  • CTRL + A: Selects all text in the input field.
  • CTRL + C: Copies the selected text.
  • .clear(): Clears the input field.
  • CTRL + V: Pastes the previously copied text back into the field.
• Execute Search: Presses Enter to perform the search.
• Verify Results: Waits for the page title to update and confirms it contains "Apple iPhone". Prints a success or failure message accordingly.
• Close Browser: The finally block ensures the browser closes gracefully using driver.quit(), even if errors occur during execution.

Test Execution:

To run the code, type the command below.

python main.py

The code should execute successfully on the terminal as follows.

When executed, your automated test will perform a realistic double click in Selenium on the specified element, as shown in the demonstration image below.

Running double click actions in Selenium on your local machine can be tricky. You might face issues like elements not being visible or interactable, timing delays, browser differences, or failures when combining double-clicks with keyboard shortcuts (CTRL + A/C/V). Debugging can also be frustrating because errors aren't always obvious, making it hard to know why your Selenium automation didn't work.

In such cases, relying on cloud platforms can be highly beneficial, and one such platform is TestMu AI (Formerly LambdaTest), which provides access to 3,000+ real devices, real browsers, and custom environments in the cloud, ensuring your double-click actions work consistently.

To see this in action, let's run the same test scenario and explore how to perform a double-click action in Selenium at scale using TestMu AI.

How to Perform Double-Click Action in Selenium at Scale?

The TestMu AI platform offers end-to-end AI agents to plan, author, execute, and analyze your tests, ensuring your double-click actions in Selenium testing behave reliably.

You can test web, mobile, and enterprise applications at any scale across real-world environments, helping you automate complex interactions like double clicks combined with keyboard shortcuts or chained actions without flakiness.

To learn how to perform a double click in Selenium on a cloud platform, you need to add a few steps to your existing code:

1. Get Your Credentials: Log in or sign up for TestMu AI. From the dashboard, navigate to Profile > Account Settings > Password & Security. Copy your username and access key, and set them as environment variables.

2. Load Credentials in Your Code: After setting the environment variables, you can load them in your script:

# Load .env credentials
from dotenv import load_dotenv
import os

load_dotenv()
username = os.getenv("LT_USERNAME")
access_key = os.getenv("LT_ACCESS_KEY")

This allows your scripts to authenticate with the TestMu AI platform and reliably perform double click in Selenium.

3. Set the TestMu AI Grid URL: After loading your credentials, configure the Selenium Grid URL to connect to TestMu AI:

# Grid URL
grid_url = f"https://{username}:{access_key}@hub.lambdatest.com/wd/hub"

This URL allows your Selenium scripts to communicate with the TestMu AI platform, enabling you to run your double click in Selenium tests on real browsers.

4. Set TestMu AI Capabilities for Selenium: After setting the Grid URL, you need to define the TestMu AI capabilities to configure your Selenium session. This tells the platform which browser, platform, and features to use for your test:

# ===== Capabilities =====
lt_options = {
    "username": username,
    "accessKey": access_key,
    "build": "Search and Double Click Action",
    "project": "Search, Double Click and Verify Test",
    "name": "Double Click on an Input Field",
    "selenium_version": "4.0.0",
    "w3c": True,
    "visual": True,
    "video": True,
}

browser_caps = {
    "platformName": "Windows 11",
    "browserName": "Chrome",
    "browserVersion": "latest",
    "seCdp": True,
    "LT:Options": lt_options
}

These capabilities let you configure the OS, browser, and version, enable visual logs and video recording, and track your project on the TestMu AI dashboard.

You can also generate the necessary Selenium capabilities easily using the TestMu AI Automation Capabilities Generator to run double click in Selenium reliably across cloud browsers and devices.

5. Connect Your Test Script: Finally, in Selenium 4, you use the Options() object and webdriver.Remote to connect to the cloud:

# Convert capabilities properly for Selenium 4
options = Options()
for key, value in browser_caps.items():
    if key != "LT:Options":
        options.set_capability(key, value)
options.set_capability("LT:Options", lt_options)

# ===== Remote WebDriver =====
driver = webdriver.Remote(
    command_executor=grid_url,
    options=options
)

This setup ensures that standard Selenium 4 capabilities are configured correctly, TestMu AI-specific options like username, access key, and build/project names are included, and your double click in Selenium test runs reliably on real browsers and devices in the cloud.

Test Execution:

To run the code, type the command below.

python main_it.py

The code should execute successfully on the terminal as follows.

Your test case should now work seamlessly on the TestMu AI cloud environment.

How Can You Fix Double Click Issues in Selenium?

Even though double click actions in Selenium usually work as expected, you may occasionally encounter issues such as elements not responding, timing mismatches, or unexpected browser behavior.

Understanding common causes and applying practical solutions can help you fix these issues and ensure your double click in Selenium tests run reliably across different browsers and environments.

Conclusion

Mastering double click in Selenium requires more than simply calling Actions.doubleClick(). When you work with real-world web applications, you'll encounter dynamic DOM updates, JavaScript event listeners, animations, overlays, and browser-specific behaviors that can cause your double-click tests to fail unexpectedly.

Throughout this guide, you learned how to build stable, cross-browser double-click interactions, from handling element not interactable errors to mitigating stale element references, version mismatches, and CI/CD timing issues.

You also discovered reliable fallback techniques, such as using JavaScript-dispatched events when native Actions fail, and how Selenium waits, retry logic, and enhanced logging can help you diagnose flakiness across Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and headless CI environments.

By combining native Actions, structured error handling, JavaScript fallbacks, and cross-browser resilience strategies, you can create Selenium tests that remain consistent, predictable, and production-ready, even when testing highly dynamic and complex web applications.

Citations

• Selenium Official WebDriver Documentation
• Selenium Actions API (Mouse & Keyboard Interactions)
• W3C WebDriver Specification
• ChromeDriver Official Documentation
• GeckoDriver (Firefox WebDriver) Official Documentation
• Microsoft Edge WebDriver Documentation
• JavaScript MouseEvent Reference (MDN Web Docs)
• Selenium Waits: Explicit, Implicit, Fluent (Official Docs)
• Handling StaleElementReferenceException (Selenium Knowledge Base)