Fake Your GeoLocation in Web Test Automation

How to fake geolocation to assist in web test automation

3 min readSep 25, 2022

Many web apps use location-based information (e.g. find the nearest restaurant). To test this feature, you need to simulate the browser’s geolocation. Tests can be run anywhere, and using specific locations can help test location-based behaviour, e.g. distance calculation.

This tutorial will go over how to fake your location in an automated test.

Sample Website

I will use WhenWise’s Location search bar for this tutorial.

Test Design

Pass in the desired geolocation to the browser
Click “Use my current location”
Expect “current location” to be the desired geolocation

Test Steps

Decide the latitude and longitude you want to use
You can use GoogleMaps to find the latitude and longitude values for a location in the URL. Click the location on the Google Map, and the geolocation will be shown in the URL. Below, I am looking at the Sydney Opera House, and the URL has the latitude -33.8571197 and longitude 151.2138464.

GoogleMaps screenshot of the Sydney Opera House & URL which has the longitude and latitude.

2. Set the latitude and longitude as the browser’s current geolocation

JavaScript method

This can be done with the JavaScript script below:

window.navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition=function(success){; var position = {'coords' : {'latitude': '-33.8571197','longitude': '151.2138464'}}; success(position);}

Use Selenium’s driver.execute_script to run this in the browser and set the geolocation.

# set geo location for user
lati = -33.8571197
longti = 151.2138464driver.execute_script("window.navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition=function(success){\ ; var position = {'coords' : {'latitude': '#{lati}','longitude': '#{longti}'}}; success(\ position);}");

Selenium 4 actually provides an alternative way to set the browser location with the Chrome Devtools Protocol (CDP).

Selenium 4/Chrome Devtools Protocol Method

For this method to succeed, verify that your Selenium version is at least v4 and the Ruby gem selenium-devtools is installed.

Different to JavaScript version, create a map of coordinates:

coordinates = {
  latitude: -33.8571197,
  longitude: 151.2138464,
  accuracy: 100
}

Then use Selenium 4’s execute_cdp to emulate the geolocation ascoordinates.

driver.execute_cdp("Emulation.setGeolocationOverride", coordinates)# Alternatively, driver.devtools.send_cmd() is the same as execute_cdp

Note: the above Chrome Devtools Protocol method only works for Windows at the moment. In macOS you may need to pass in .execute_cdp(..., **coordinates) and enable your browser to use location access. Since it’s still quite new and not yet OS independent I recommend using the JavaScript method for now.

3. Verify the browser’s “current location”

Use the web app’s “Get Current Location”, in WhenWise, this is the location icon.

driver.find_element(:id, "get-current-location-link").click
sleep 0.25 # wait for JavaScript# verify autofilled location
expect(driver.find_element(:id, "location")['value']).to eq("2 Circular Quay E, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia")

Complete Script

JavaScript Method

it "Fake Location to Sydney Opera House" do
  driver.find_element(:id, "tab-location").click
      
  lati = -33.8571197
  longti = 151.2138464
      driver.execute_script("window.navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition=function(success){\ ; var position = {'coords' : {'latitude': '#{lati}','longitude': '#{longti}'}}; success(\ position);}");
      
  driver.find_element(:id, "get-current-location-link").click
  sleep 0.25
  expect(driver.find_element(:id, "location")['value']).to eq("2 Circular Quay E, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia")
end

Selenium 4’s CDP method (Windows version):

it "Fake Location to Sydney Opera House with CDP (Windows)" do
    coordinates = {
      latitude: -33.8571197,
      longitude: 151.2138464,
      accuracy: 100,
    }
    driver.execute_cdp("Emulation.setGeolocationOverride", coordinates)
    driver.get("https://whenwise.agileway.net")    driver.find_element(:id, "tab-location").click
    driver.find_element(:id, "get-current-location-link").click
    sleep 0.25
    expect(driver.find_element(:id, "location")["value"]).to eq("2 Circular Quay E, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia")
end