How to resolve ElementNotInteractableException: Element is not visible in Selenium webdriver?

ElementNotInteractableException

ElementNotInteractableException is the W3C exception which is thrown to indicate that although an element is present on the HTML DOM, it is not in a state that can be interacted with.

Reasons & Solutions :

The reason for ElementNotInteractableException to occur can be numerous.

1. Temporary Overlay of other WebElement over the WebElement of our interest :

   In this case, the direct solution would have been to induce ExplicitWait i.e. WebDriverWait in combination with ExpectedCondition as invisibilityOfElementLocated as folllows:

   WebDriverWait wait2 = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);
   wait2.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(By.xpath("xpath_of_element_to_be_invisible")));
   driver.findElement(By.xpath("xpath_element_to_be_clicked")).click();
   

   A better solution will be to get a bit more granular and instead of using ExpectedCondition as invisibilityOfElementLocated we can use ExpectedCondition as elementToBeClickable as follows:

   WebDriverWait wait1 = new WebDriverWait(driver, 10);
   WebElement element1 = wait1.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("xpath_of_element_to_be_clicked")));
   element1.click();
   

2. Permanent Overlay of other WebElement over the WebElement of our interest :

   If the overlay is a permanent one in this case we have to cast the WebDriver instance as JavascriptExecutor and perform the click operation as follows:

   WebElement ele = driver.findElement(By.xpath("element_xpath"));
   JavascriptExecutor executor = (JavascriptExecutor)driver;
   executor.executeScript("arguments[0].click();", ele);