Safari opens by default in incognito mode?

[Ivan Tadin]

When I run my WebDriver script with Safari, the browser starts in incognito mode. This causes scripts to break when attempting to store data to localstorage (incognito mode doesn't allow this storage).
This causes the following issue to occur:
"QuotaExceededError (DOM Exception 22): The quota has been exceeded."

Is there a way to instruct the browser to open in normal mode rather than private mode?
Any help would be much appreciated, thanks! ;)

WebDriver version: 3.4.0
Safari version: 10.1.1
OS: OS X El Capital 10.11.6

[David]

I doubt you can really do that. These are new restrictions for automating with latest Safari. Workaround solutions:

• automate Safari testing with something other than Selenium/WebDriver (AtoMac, AutoPy, Sikuli, etc.)
• use older versions of Safari and Selenium//SafariDriver, e.g. Safari 6-9 & Selenium 2.x, which don't have this restriction.

[Pascal Bihler]

I doubt you can really do that. These are new restrictions for automating with latest Safari. Workaround solutions:

• automate Safari testing with something other than Selenium/WebDriver (AtoMac, AutoPy, Sikuli, etc.)
• use older versions of Safari and Selenium//SafariDriver, e.g. Safari 6-9 & Selenium 2.x, which don't have this restriction.

Another option is to use the "deprecated" Safari Extension together with a patched version of Selenium 3.4.0 (https://github.com/pbi-qfs/selenium/tree/fix-legacy-safari), which might also work on your system.

[David]

Thanks Pascal, that's good info to know.

Additionally, for those that feel the pain of this issue, send your gripes to Apple. They're imposing this design. You can file bugs to their bug reporter and post to their forums, etc.