Auto Schedules

Advanced selectors

Four optional XPath fields in the Page tweaks section at the foot of the schedule form. They are how you deal with a page that needs something doing to it before the capture is worth having.

The four selectors

They live on the Auto Schedule rather than the Web Profile, because the right selector is specific to one page. Leave them empty unless the page needs them. The section is folded into two blocks: Capture one element instead of the page and Do something before the shot. A sitemap schedule has only Hide these elements, applied to every page.

Field	Type	Default	Description
`XPath of the element`	XPath	—	Capture only this element instead of the whole page. Only the first match is used. Available only when the selected Web Profile produces an image.
`Click this element`	XPath	—	Click the first match before capturing.
`Hide these elements`	CSS or XPath	—	Up to 25 selectors, separated by commas. Every match is hidden before capturing, including elements the page adds later; nothing fails if nothing matches, and a selector the browser does not accept is skipped. On a sitemap schedule it applies to every page.
`Hover over this element`	XPath	—	Hold the pointer over the first match before capturing.

Order matters, and it is fixed

Hide, click and hover are applied before the shot, not in an order you control. If you need a sequence of interactions the page does not survive without, a selector is the wrong tool — capture a URL that already shows the state you want.

Finding an XPath

Open the page in Chrome or Firefox and right-click the element you care about.
Choose Inspect. The element is highlighted in the developer tools panel.
Right-click the highlighted markup, then Copy → Copy XPath.
Paste it into the field.

XPath examples

/html/body/div[2]/section[1]
//*[@id="cookie-banner"]
//div[@class="pricing-table"]
//button[contains(text(), "Accept")]

Prefer an id or a class over a copied path

Browsers copy a positional path like /html/body/div[2]/section[1]. It works today and breaks the moment somebody adds a div. A selector written against an id or a stable class name — //*[@id="cookie-banner"] — survives far longer.

Common recipes

Value	Meaning
`Cookie banner in the shot`	If Dismiss pop-ups on the profile did not catch it, click the accept button, or hide the banner's container.
`Chat widget covering the corner`	Hide it. It is almost always a single container with a stable id.
`Only the pricing table matters`	Put the table's XPath in XPath of the element. The capture is then just that element, at whatever size it renders.
`Content behind a tab`	Click the tab. The capture is taken after the panel has switched.
`A menu that only opens on hover`	Hover the menu trigger, so the dropdown is open in the capture.
`A promo bar that changes every day`	Hide it, so a sequence of daily captures differs only where the page genuinely differs.

A cookie can beat a click

If you know the cookie the site sets once a visitor accepts, set it on the Web Profile instead (not available on the free trial). The banner then never renders, which is one less thing to break when the site redesigns its dialog.

Selectors go stale

A selector is a promise about somebody else’s markup, and you will not be told when they change it. The capture does not fail — it simply comes back with the banner still in it, or empty where the element used to be.

Look at the first capture after adding a selector, and confirm it did what you meant.
Check the thumbnails periodically. A row of identical captures that suddenly change shape is the tell.
After any visible redesign of the target site, re-check every selector you have against it.

A capture selector that matches nothing produces nothing useful

If the element has gone, there is no fallback to the full page: the capture produces nothing, and a capture that produces nothing is not counted against your plan. Prefer a hide or click selector where a missing element should be survivable, and keep element capture for elements you are confident are stable.

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