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How to get data like xpath and ids from a minimized webpage using selenium

the issue am dealing with is trying to get selenium to run in the background while getting data like webpage elements xpath and ids and being able to use it while remaining activity in the background and not keep poping up browser tab in front of other running programs

You should try running your browser in headless mode. Here is a code snippet of the function that gives the instance of chrome in headless mode.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
def browser_open(headless=False):
options = Options()
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("disable-gpu")
options.add_argument("no-default-browser-check")
options.add_argument("no-first-run")
options.add_argument("no-sandbox")
options.add_argument("window-size=1300x744")
if headless == True:
options.add_argument("headless")
chrome_browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "chromedriver"), chrome_options=options)
chrome_browser.maximize_window()
return chrome_browser

Is there a way to hide the browser while running selenium in Python?

I am working on a project with selenium to scrape the data, but I don't want the browser to open and pop up. I just wanted to hide the browser and also not to display it in the taskbar also...
Some also suggested to use phantomJS but I didn't get them. What to do now ...

If you're using Chrome you can just set the headless argument like so:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
driver_exe = 'chromedriver'
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(driver_exe, options=options)

For chrome you could pass in the --headless parameter.
Alternatively you could let selenium work on a virtual display like this:
from selenium import webdriver
from xvfbwrapper import Xvfb
display = Xvfb()
display.start()
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get('http://www.stackoverflow.com')
print(driver.title)
driver.quit()
display.stop()
The latter has worked for me quite well.

To hide the browser while executing tests using Selenium's python you can use the minimize_window() method which eventually minimizes/pushes the Chrome Browsing Context effectively to the background using the following solution:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
options.add_experimental_option('useAutomationExtension', False)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path=r'C:\Utility\BrowserDrivers\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get('https://www.google.co.in')
driver.minimize_window()
Alternative
As an alternative you can use the headless attribute to configure ChromeDriver to initiate google-chrome browser in Headless mode using Selenium and you can find a couple of relevant discussions in:
How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium?

If you're using Firefox, try this:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
driver_exe = 'path/to/firefoxdriver'
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Firefox(driver_exe, options=options)
similar to what #Meshi answered in case of Chrome

if you want to hide chrome or selenium driver there is a library pyautogui
import pyautogui
window = [ x for x in pyautogui.getAllWindows()]
by this, you are getting all window title
now you need to find your window
for i in window:
if 'Google Chrome' in i.title:
i.hide()
or you can play with your driver title also

Chrome opens with “Data;” with selenium chromedriver

Trying to open "Google" or any other page (website) from Chrome via selenium chrome driver in python.
The code is :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from time import sleep
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
import time
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get('https://google.com')
However, this opens my chrome window with the specified link and "data;" tab.
Why that data; tab opens? How to fix it?
Using latest versions of Chrome and Chromedriver

You don't need as much module for this just remove all of those apart from:
from selenium import webdriver
And try again you will not get another tab with congaing data.

import time
time.sleep(1)
driver.switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[1])
driver.close()
driver.switch_to.window(driver.window_handles[0])
time.sleep(1)

I'm not sure if its the same problem, but some time ago I made an exe script to run in another PCs and in one of the PCs selenium just didn't worked with Chrome.
This is the question I posted, but the answers didn't help me, hope it works with you: Chromedriver do not open a new session, it opens a new tab in a existing session
If it doesn't work, I made a workaround to run with Firefox instead of Chrome to ensure it would work properly.

With selenium 4 (or newer), you can use the following code to launch a new browser, (without the Chrome is being controlled message), and then the browser navigates to Google in the same tab:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
options.add_experimental_option("useAutomationExtension", False)
service = ChromeService()
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service, options=options)
driver.get('https://google.com')

how can i remove notifications and alerts from browser? selenium python 2.7.7

I am trying to submit information in a webpage, but selenium throws this error:
UnexpectedAlertPresentException: Alert Text: This page is asking you
to confirm that you want to leave - data you have entered may not be
saved. ,
>
It's not a leave notification; here is a pic of the notification -
.
If I click in never show this notification again, my action doesn't get saved; is there a way to save it or disable all notifications?
edit: I'm using firefox.

You can disable the browser notifications, using chrome options. Sample code below:
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"profile.default_content_setting_values.notifications" : 2}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs",prefs)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=chrome_options)

With the latest version of Firefox the above preferences didn't work.
Below is the solution which disable notifications using Firefox object
_browser_profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile()
_browser_profile.set_preference("dom.webnotifications.enabled", False)
webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=_browser_profile)
Disable notifications when using Remote Object:
webdriver.Remote(desired_capabilities=_desired_caps, command_executor=_url, options=_custom_options, browser_profile=_browser_profile)
selenium==3.11.0

Usually with browser settings like this, any changes you make are going to get throws away the next time Selenium starts up a new browser instance.
Are you using a dedicated Firefox profile to run your selenium tests? If so, in that Firefox profile, set this setting to what you want and then close the browser. That should properly save it for its next use. You will need to tell Selenium to use this profile though, thats done by SetCapabilities when you start the driver session.

This will do it:
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
options = Options()
options.set_preference("dom.webnotifications.enabled", False)
browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_options=options)

For Google Chrome and v3 of Selenium you may receive "DeprecationWarning: use options instead of chrome_options", so you will want to do the following:
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--disable-notifications')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install(), options=options)
Note: I am using webdriver-manager, but this also works with specifying the executable_path.

This answer is an improvement on TH Todorov code snippet, based on what is working as of Chrome (Version 80.0.3987.163).
lk = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "chromedriver",) --> in this line you provide the link to the chromedriver, which you can download from chromedrive link
import os
from selenium import webdriver
lk = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), "chromedriver",)
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"profile.default_content_setting_values.notifications" : 2}
chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs",prefs)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(lk, options=chrome_options)

Python Selenium Firefox on Ubuntu: New Tabs Not Working

I'm doing remote web crawling and scraping, and hoping not to reload a new browser window for every link on one page.
The problem is that new tabs are not opening up with my Firefox web driver.
Here's what I've tried:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
from selenium.webdriver.common.action_chains import ActionChains
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
# launch our headless display
display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
display.start()
# launch our web driver and get a page
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get("http://www.google.com/")
# try to open a new tab
ActionChains(browser).key_down(Keys.CONTROL).send_keys("t").key_up(Keys.CONTROL).perform()
# this should print 2, but it prints 1, because new tab not opened
print len(browser.window_handles)
# clean up everything
browser.quit()
display.stop()
Specifications:
Ubuntu 14.04.2
Python 2.7.6
Selenium 2.47.1
PyVirtualDisplay 0.1.3

Based on this response from a Selenium developer, new tabs in Firefox are not supported as of August 2015. He suggested exploring Marionette but currently its dependencies cause more trouble than it's worth, at least for my use case. His solution is to just use new windows (driver.execute_script("window.open()")), instead of new tabs.