[🐛 Bug]: EdgeDriver unable to set TextArea text in headless mode

[nworm-lenovo]

What happened?

I am navigating to a JIRA site and attempting to create a JIRA using Selenium and C# and the following configuration:
Edge Browser version 133.0.3065.82
Microsoft Edge WebDriver version: 133.0.3065.59
Selenium.WebDriver: 4.24.0
Selenium.Support: 4.24.0
.NET 8.0 Desktop - Windows Forms Application

In the code I click the “Create” button on the JIRA site and a “Create Issue” form appears. This form has a “textarea” for entering the description. When I generate the EdgeDriver using EdgeOptions containing “--headless”, the webdriver is unable to “SendKeys” or perform a copy/paste (using OpenQA.Selenium.Interactions.Actions with CTL+C and CTL+V) into the textarea.

However, if executed when NOT IN HEADLESS MODE, there are no issues performing either a SendKeys() or the Copy/Paste when interacting with the textarea.

The textarea HTML looks like this:

<div id="description-wiki-edit" class="wiki-edit-content">
	<textarea class="textarea long-field wiki-textfield long-field mentionable wiki-editor-initialised wiki-edit-wrapped" id="description" name="description" wrap="virtual"  data-qe-no-aria-labelled-by="true" data-use-new-endpoint="true" resolved="" style="min-height: 174px; max-height: 369px;" data-editor-id="1740509257556-5"></textarea>
	<div class="rte-container">
		<rich-editor contenteditable="true" data-issue-key="null" data-content-present="true" tabindex="-1" resolved=""></rich-editor>
	</div>
	<div class="content-inner"></div>
	<div class="phantom-caret" style="top: 7.99716px; height: 0px;"></div>
	<nav class="aui-navgroup aui-navgroup-horizontal editor-toggle-tabs">
		<div class="aui-navgroup-inner">
			<div class="aui-navgroup-primary">
				<ul class="aui-nav" resolved="">
					<li data-mode="wysiwyg">
						<button type="button" class="aui-button" aria-pressed="false" resolved="">Visual</button>
					</li>
					<li data-mode="source" class="aui-nav-selected">
						<button type="button" class="aui-button" aria-pressed="true" resolved="">Text</button>
					</li>
				</ul>
			</div>
		</div>
	</nav>
	<span class="aui-label editor-toggle-tooltip"></span>
</div>

And is within a pop-up form containing the textarea is defined like:

<section id="create-issue-dialog" class="aui-dialog2 aui-layer jira-dialog2 jira-dialog-core aui-dialog2-large jira-dialog-open jira-dialog-content-ready" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="jira-dialog2__heading" style="z-index: 3000;" data-aui-focus="false" data-aui-blanketed="true" open="" tabindex="-1">

My code to find and interact with the webelement looks like this:

                IWebElement iweDescriptionText = driver.FindElement(By.Id("description"));
                iweDescriptionText.Clear();
                iweDescriptionText.SendKeys(“some text I want to send to the description textarea.”);

The SendKeys() command completes without issue but the text is not written to the text-area. If I attempt to access the Text property of the IWebElement afterwards it is an empty string.
Debug.WriteLine($"Set Description: \"{iweDescriptionText.Text}\"");

Again, this only fails when using the “--headless" EdgeOptions for WebDriver instantiation.

How can we reproduce the issue?

1) Using above configuration
2) Navigate to a Jira.Labs site in headless mode
3) Interact with the pop-up form displayed when clicking "Create".
4) Attempt to Set the text in the "Description" field.

Relevant log output

I don't have relevant log information.

Operating System

Windows 11 Pro

Selenium version

dotnet 8 - 4.24.0

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Edge Browser version 133.0.3065.82

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Microsoft Edge WebDriver version: 133.0.3065.59

Are you using Selenium Grid?

No response

[github-actions]

@nworm-lenovo, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[cgoldberg]

There are known limitations with sending control sequences in chromedriver in headless mode:

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/42323953#comment18

edgedriver probably has similar issues. I doubt there is anything that can be done to fix this within Selenium code.

[nworm-lenovo]

Thank you for the quick reply. I did try sending a control sequence that worked when NOT in headless mode, but I also tried executing the IWebElement method SendKeys() directly (instead of the control sequence). Both of these methods failed during headless mode.

[joerg1985]

@nworm-lenovo did you try running the new headless mode, via--headless=new?

[nworm-lenovo]

Issue resolved. Copy/Paste does not work in headless mode. Additionally, if SendKeys() content contains a \t, the focus will shift to the next element in the tab order. Cleaned \t from text resolved the issue. Thank you!

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity since it was closed. Please open a new issue for related bugs.