Implementation:SeleniumHQ Selenium HasCapabilities

Knowledge Sources	SeleniumHQ_Selenium Selenium Documentation
Domains	WebDriver, Capabilities
Last Updated	2026-02-12 00:00 GMT

Overview

Concrete tool for enabling run-time capability introspection on WebDriver instances provided by the Selenium WebDriver library.

Description

HasCapabilities is a marker interface that classes implement to indicate they can describe the Capabilities they possess. It defines a single method, getCapabilities(), which returns the capabilities of the current driver. This enables run-time feature detection by allowing callers to inspect what a driver supports without relying on compile-time type checks.

Usage

Import and use HasCapabilities when you need to check the capabilities of a running WebDriver instance at runtime, for example to determine the browser name, platform, or whether specific features are enabled. Cast a WebDriver to HasCapabilities to access the getCapabilities() method.

Code Reference

Source Location

• Repository: SeleniumHQ_Selenium
• File: java/src/org/openqa/selenium/HasCapabilities.java

Signature

public interface HasCapabilities {
    Capabilities getCapabilities();
}

Import

import org.openqa.selenium.HasCapabilities;

I/O Contract

Inputs

Name	Type	Required	Description
(none)			This interface has no input parameters; it is implemented by driver classes

Outputs

Name	Type	Description
getCapabilities()	Capabilities	Returns the capabilities of the current driver instance

Usage Examples

WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

// Cast to HasCapabilities to inspect driver capabilities at runtime
if (driver instanceof HasCapabilities) {
    Capabilities caps = ((HasCapabilities) driver).getCapabilities();
    String browserName = caps.getBrowserName();
    System.out.println("Running on: " + browserName);

    // Check for specific capability
    Object platformName = caps.getCapability("platformName");
    System.out.println("Platform: " + platformName);
}

Related Pages

• Principle:SeleniumHQ_Selenium_Browser_Options_Configuration