Overview

Microsoft Edge WebDriver is a standalone server which implements the WebDriver protocol for the Edge browser. It is supported by Windows 10 and onwards and is now available for Mac and Linux platforms also.

Download

Download the desired version from the Microsoft Edge WebDriver downloads page. After the download completes, extract the zip archive and place msedgedriver to your preferred location inside the project.

Standalone Usage

Nightwatch can manage the EdgeDriver service automatically, as with other WebDriver services, such as ChromeDriver. To use Microsoft Edge WebDriver directly, configure Nightwatch as below (already configured in auto-generated configuration file) and set the server_path property of webdriver to the location of the extracted msedgedriver in your project:

{
  "test_settings": {
    "edge": {
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "MicrosoftEdge",
        "ms:edgeOptions": {
          "w3c": true,
          "args": [
            //"--headless"
          ]
        }
      },

      "webdriver": {
        "start_process": true,
        "server_path": "./path/to/msedgedriver",
        "cli_args": [
          // "--verbose"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

and then run the tests using the following command:

npx nightwatch --env edge

Selenium Server Usage

If you're using Microsoft Edge WebDriver through Selenium Server, simply set the cli argument "webdriver.edge.driver" to point to the location of the binary file. E.g.:

{
  "test_settings": {
    "selenium_server": {
      "selenium": {
        "start_process": true,
        "port": 4444,
        "server_path": "",
        "command": "standalone",
        "cli_args": {
          "webdriver.edge.driver": "./path/to/msedgedriver"
        }
      },
      "webdriver": {
        "start_process": false,
        "default_path_prefix": "/wd/hub"
      }
    },
    "selenium.edge": {
      "extends": "selenium_server",
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "MicrosoftEdge",
        "acceptSslCerts": true
      },
    }
  }
}

and then run the tests using the following command:

npx nightwatch --env selenium.edge

Note: The above code-block assumes that you are using @nightwatch/selenium-server package with Selenium 4. If you are using selenium-server standalone jar file instead, set the server_path property of selenium to point to the location of the jar file. And if you are using Selenium 3, remove the command property from selenium.

Running EdgeDriver Standalone

If you're only running your tests against Edge, running the Microsoft Edge WebDriver standalone can be slightly faster. Also there is no dependency on Java. This requires a bit of configuration and you will need to start/stop the EdgeDriver:

1) Configure Nightwatch as below:

Microsoft Edge WebDriver runs by default on port 9515.

{
  "test_settings": {
    "edge": {
      "desiredCapabilities": {
        "browserName": "MicrosoftEdge",
        "ms:edgeOptions": {
          "w3c": true,
          "args": [
            //"--headless"
          ]
        }
      },

      "webdriver": {
        "start_process": false,
        "port": 9515,
        "server_path": "",
        "cli_args": [
          // "--verbose"
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

2) Start EdgeDriver

From your terminal window, simply cd to the folder where the msedgedriver binary is located and run (Linux/MacOS):

./msedgedriver

Output should look like:

Starting MSEdgeDriver 98.0.1108.62 (86b4ba0c0a320a2c0c88adba983ad3b5ce15710f) on port 9515
Only local connections are allowed.
Please see https://chromedriver.chromium.org/security-considerations for suggestions on keeping MSEdgeDriver safe.
MSEdgeDriver was started successfully.

3) Run your tests against Edge

npx nightwatch --env edge

Here's the full command line usage:

./mdedgedriver -h
Usage: ./msedgedriver [OPTIONS]

Options
  --port=PORT                     port to listen on
  --adb-port=PORT                 adb server port
  --log-path=FILE                 write server log to file instead of stderr, increases log level to INFO
  --log-level=LEVEL               set log level: ALL, DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, SEVERE, OFF
  --verbose                       log verbosely (equivalent to --log-level=ALL)
  --silent                        log nothing (equivalent to --log-level=OFF)
  --append-log                    append log file instead of rewriting
  --replayable                    (experimental) log verbosely and don't truncate long strings so that the log can be replayed.
  --version                       print the version number and exit
  --url-base                      base URL path prefix for commands, e.g. wd/url
  --readable-timestamp            add readable timestamps to log
  --enable-chrome-logs            show logs from the browser (overrides other logging options)
  --allowed-ips=LIST              comma-separated allowlist of remote IP addresses which are allowed to connect to MSEdgeDriver
  --allowed-origins=LIST          comma-separated allowlist of request origins which are allowed to connect to MSEdgeDriver. Using `*` to allow any host origin is dangerous!