How do I make Selenium wait for a page to load?

Selenium has three mechanisms for handling page loads. Set a pageLoadStrategy (normal, eager, or none) on the driver to control what counts as “loaded” during navigation, use an explicit WebDriverWait to block until a specific element or DOM condition is true, and reach for set_page_load_timeout only to cap how long a hung navigation can stall the test. Explicit waits are the right default for almost everything.

Wait types compared

There are four knobs you actually use. Pick one based on what you are waiting for, not on which one you remember the name of.

time.sleep is not on the list. Use it only as a temporary debugging aid, never in committed test code.

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC

driver.set_page_load_timeout(30)  # cap on driver.get itself
driver.get("https://example.com/dashboard")

WebDriverWait(driver, 10).until(
    EC.presence_of_element_located((By.CSS_SELECTOR, "[data-testid='loaded']"))
)

Swap presence_of_element_located for visibility_of_element_located if the element is in the DOM before it is rendered, or element_to_be_clickable if you are about to click it.

Setting page load strategy

pageLoadStrategy controls what driver.get blocks on. normal waits for document.readyState == "complete" (the default and what most people want). eager returns at interactive, which is DOMContentLoaded with images and subresources still loading. none returns the moment the navigation is dispatched, leaving you to decide when the page is ready via an explicit wait.

from selenium import webdriver

opts = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
opts.page_load_strategy = "eager"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=opts)

Use eager to shave seconds off image-heavy pages. Use none when the page does its real work after load fires (SPAs, infinite scroll) and you only want explicit waits to gate progress.